LICENCE TO KILL
Before:
The tough, the gritty, the most Daltonesque of Daltons. A budget crunched. The first real rogue Bond. A revenge thriller. The last Dalton. The Bond which no Bond followed for six years. The original Craig which was only bested by the actual Craig going rogue for his whole tenure. The one film which was supposedly really going back to Fleming and had critics rave about it… twenty years later, after they had flogged it for being a Miami Vice episode with an uncharismatic and dour Bond actor.
On a personal note: I remember being excited for it (despite the terribly cheap photo collage on the poster), going into the cinema with high expectations and leaving with the feeling of “okay, that’s it for Bond then”. I enjoyed “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” that summer a lot more. Even “Batman”. And “Lethal Weapon 2”. After “Licence to kill” I entered my “film student phase”, leaving my Bond films taped from the tv vulnerable to overtaping with arthouse fare. Or “Hydrotoxin” with Brosnan. Yes, I was done with Bond.
Later on, when I hopped back on the Bond train, I saw LTK again on videotape and thought… um… well, it´s okay. But nowhere near my favorites. And even later on I rewatched it and thought: Oh, yes, this is a great and gritty Bond film, so Fleming-like, hah, an underrated film and I am now team Dalton big time!
My last re-watch also confirmed my opinion (informed by many others who adored it and whose club I desperately wanted to join, you know, being one of the cool kids). And now?
Brace yourself, you can already see where this is going…
After:
So I rewatched this after rewatching YOLT. And while I still think that Dalton gives it everything he’s got, I made a disconcerting discovery: LTK is not what it is rumored to be. It is not gritty, it is not a tough and totally Fleming-esque thriller.
It is a typical Bond film, softening every attempt at hardening it up, employing the usual puns, action set pieces and an overly cute Q scene (no, make that at least three of them).
John Glen has said he thinks this is his best Bond. It isn’t. It´s his worst. Because despite his expertise at handling action, camera placement and editing, here he really is revealed as not being good with actors AT ALL.
Yes, again, Dalton is great - and so is Davi. But everybody around them was either not directed or not directed well enough. Carey Lowell is all over the place: tough at first but on the boat (after that absolutely absurd bar brawl sequence which belongs in a Hill/Spencer-spoof and NOT in a gritty Fleming Bond) weirdly going in for a kiss on the, um, bloody mouth of Bond, which somehow leads to her acting like a school girl. Okay, a school girl who can pilot a plane. But I had forgotten that there isn’t only the teary eyed scene at the end when Pam thinks Bond is favoring the prom queen. There is also a precursor to that in the hotel when she apes Lupe´s way of speaking. And Q is rolling his eyes (I was too) as if he is on stage for a bedroom farce.
If you look at the rest of the supporting players, maybe Anthony Zerbe still knows what he’s doing because he has done this sort of part tons of times before. But the others? So many - including Benicio del Toro - seem to be cast because they were cheap but not for their acting resume (like the CIA agents and Sanchez´ goons, really delivering the dialogue without convincing me).
The idea of Bond so disturbed that he wants to resign in order to seek revenge might be interesting at first - but his argument with M is so out of character (“I owe it to Leiter”). Wouldn’t he know that he cannot just take time off to take revenge? “We´re no country club, 007” indeed. It would have been more interesting to have Bond persuade M to let him stay on the job because he had found out about Sanchez´ gameplan and then ignored everything in order to take revenge.
By the way: Sanchez´ gameplan really is not that exciting. A different way to smuggle drugs. Yeah, lots of money involved, sure. But… in a Bond film? No wonder it was ridiculed as a “Miami Vice”-episode. Which actually always looked much more stylish and visually interesting. I know, I know - the budget was brutally slashed. But then they should have rethought the whole idea and not have gone for that overlit and often just colorless look which especially for a more or less one location story adds to the sameness of it all.
As for the “grittiness”: you don’t make a movie gritty by showing more cruelty and blood. The worst offender is the grinder in which del Toro gets maimed (by the way: is grinding a pet peeve for the Bond producers? “A View To A Kill” already has a KGB agent thrown into a propeller.).
At least the finale with the truck chase works magnificently, and Bond lighting up Sanchez is a fitting end. (I know I just complained about brutality, but in contrast to the Fargo-ing of del Toro this is poetic justice and a good use of the lighter given to Bond in the beginning.)
The PTS is fine, too, and the Michael Kamen score (looking forward to listening to it on the LLL release in its entirety) uses the Bond theme much more than I remembered.
And while the film moves quickly and is well edited I still got bored a lot of the time, I believe, because Bond here really is stumbling through the proceedings, endangering the CIA covert operation, causing the death of many involved. One might say: hey, that’s Bond for you. And it is true, he often causes collateral damage and never gives it a second thought.
But in LTK he is supposed to be NOT flippant or winging it because he likes to provoke and then react as in all the previous adventures. In LTK he is supposed to avenge Della and Felix, not enjoying anything, single-mindedly following his own strategy which is… winging it. Just go with the flow, I have all the time in the world. At no time he thinks: oh, maybe Mi6 will try to get me for this or even send out people to stop me.
And they don’t, really. We even have Miss Moneypenny (one scene, very badly directed) sending out Q against M´s wishes to help poor Bond.
Nobody gets fired for this, of course. And M just stops caring mid-film.
So… what do I think of LTK now after re-watching it?
It´s watchable for some parts. But nowhere near… good. It´s just ideas in search of a better plot and a better execution.
Especially after TLD which I loved (and hope and expect to love after rewatching) Dalton would have needed a really strong second film. He did not get it. (Brosnan got a much better second film, actually.)
One more thing: Della is kissing Bond on the mouth a lot. It seems she would have rather married him than Felix, doesn’t it? And the way the film forgets to give Bond a reunion with Felix at the end, telling him that he really avenged Della for him, is unforgivable. Here is the reason for everything Bond risked - and he has only time for a phone call which he quickly ends because he has to kiss Lupe and then jump into the pool to console the crying CIA pilot? (Why jump into the pool, which also looks not very good - hey, at least let Bond do a Connery-jumps-from-the-oil-rig-professional-swimmer-dive!)
