Agreed Dalton is phenomenal in TLD and like sharpshooter I appreciate the range on display; he’s alternately charming, tender, playful, brooding, brutal and cold. I also agree the carnival scene is a standout, but I also feel like its effectiveness sent the wrong message to the powers-that-be, encouraging them to double down on the “rage” routine in the follow-up film. Yes, Dalton is good at “vengeful” but there’s more to him than that, and for me LTK spends way too much time on “angry Bond.” Too often Dalton is criticised for a lack of charisma compared to his predecessors, and a dour seriousness that sucked the “fun” out of his films. But in TLD he demonstrates he can do light comedy, and he can be charming and charismatic. LTK’s script calls for a Bond who’s beyond caring about charming anyone or putting a flippant, jokey spin on anything, looking good in a suit or, apparently, whether his hair looks ridiculous. He’s focused only on dealing death and we get the impression he fully expects not to come back alive himself. When we finally do get a relaxed, “happy” Bond at the end (with the awkward phone call to Felix and the dip in the pool) it feels out of place and inappropriate. I wish he’d gotten that third film to prove there was more to him than the Charles Bronson schtick.
I like Kara but I agree her naivete makes her appear younger than she is. Or maybe we just hope she’s younger as an excuse for being so clueless. Like Dalton, though, D’Abo brings more to the script than exists on the page, because she makes Kara seem endearing. By the end of the film, I want her to end up with Bond, even if five minutes after the credits roll I realized she’s totally wrong for him. But I like the suggestion that even though Bond knows how to harden his heart to get his job done, he’s still capable of cherishing innocence and naivete in others, and that maybe in addition to patriotism, part of his motivation is to do the dirty work necessary for innocents to live out their happy lives, even if it is in a state of blissful ignorance. I particularly like the scene where Bond says there is no way they’re going back for the cello, but then we cut to him waiting in the car for her to bring the cello. That went a long way to humanize Bond for me as a tough professional with a softer side, and it was a great way to work in humor without taking the Roger route. I think they were onto something there and I’d like to have seen more of it over time.
As far as Tiffany knowing who Bond is, this was part of a weird slice of time where Bond seemed to be a minor celebrity in-universe. I don’t know why a smuggler should have heard of James Bond. Later Scaramanga is so impressed by him that he’s got a waxwork of 007, but I guess an assassin would have heard about another assassin at some point, even if he’s not strictly speaking a competitor. Stromberg knows immediately who Bond is even when he uses an alias. Drax says “Your reputation precedes you, of course.” Someone in charge obviously feels Bond is a well-known figure in-universe, at least in the 70s. Maybe this explains why Roger always seems to say he’s “Bond, James Bond” with a cocky smirk, as in “…perhaps you’ve heard of me?” Roger’s Bond sometimes seems as recognized on the street as his Simon Templar. Interestingly, Roger also said (often) that Bond is ridiculous because “he’s a spy but every bartender in the world knows his drink.” I still don’t know where he got that idea, as the only character who’d made him his vodka martini without instructions was Dikko Henderson in YOLT, a fellow agent (and he got it wrong!).