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So, rewatching Licence to Kill tonight l, for the first time on BluRay. Some thoughts:
Michael Kamen's score is great! It's not the sort that is a good listen on a soundtrack CD, but gives the film an appropriately dark, brooding tone.
Priscilla Barnes over plays somewhat, but Robert Davi is marvellous. I live the way he smiles for the press photographers like a movie star while being put into the police wagon.
John Glen's direction has dated a little. Many sequences are great but he relies too often on long-shots. Anthony Zerbe does absolutely the best drunk acting in the business!
Timothy Dalton is marvellous. I love The Living Daylights but a Roger Moore-style quip turns to Ashes in his mouth.
The extended sequence of Bond on the Wavekrest one of the best sustained action and suspense scenes in the entire Bond canon. John Glen was really good at these!
I'm reminded of another Glen Bond picture that was unfashionable for many years, Octopussy. About a third of the film, I'm guessing, is one huge, triumphant, action and chase sequence.
Talisa Soto is very underrated as a complex character, trapped in an abusive relationship with Sanchez. Well-written, too: when Bond first meets Lupe she's recently been whipped by her jealous lover and it's clear that she doesn't want Bond, or any man, touching her.
Anthony Starke has turned up as yuppie banker from hell Truman-Lodge. He and Wayne Newton's televangelist Professor Joe are brilliant characters. The latter in particular helps lighten the tone a little, even for someone like me who doesn't really know who Newton is.
Dalton looks great with swept-back hair, which also acts as a visual cue to the audience that Bond is undercover as a different characters.
It's really nice that Q is seen more in this one, and Desmond Llewelyn really does well. He looks so hurt when Bond tells him to go home.
The plotting is extremely clever. We are well into the film before we discover that, far from being the hero of the story, Bond has actually been a complete arse, blinded by hatred and desire for vengeance. Only by sheer chance is he given the chance to undo the damage he's done
Had Licence to Kill been the big hit it deserved to be, I wonder if the following films would have put Dalton through the mill in the same way Craig has been. Dalton plays anger, shock and regret so well in this one.
It should also be remembered that LTK took four times its production cost at the box office. This was a very profitable film. The gap in production betwee this and GoldenEye was more to do with UA/MGM using Bond as a means to stay afloat.
The budget of the Bond movies hadn't increased since Moonraker, which is why the producers used a Mexican studio base for LTK. They were performing miracles by this point to make the films look so big and impressive.
Sanchez's production facility goes up in flames very easily. The little fire Bond starts in the lab causes everyone to abandon the place immediately despite no evidence that it's spread.
Dario's death in the crushing machine - after losing every fight we see him in for the entire film - is still grim today, especially now we Brits are allowed to see the uncut version.
The final chase sequence with oil tankers and a light aircraft is just superb. Anthony Starke's Truman-Lodge plays his scenes very well - terror written all over his face until he forgets himself and gives the boss some lip. Bad idea!
It occurs to me that, even more than Moonraker, this is a Bond film where the villain gets all the best lines. Dalton gets a single one-liner ('He came to a dead end') and it's rubbish! Robert Davi gets some absolute zingers and displays great timing.
Bond's faulty lighter is vital to the denouement, but we haven't seen it for about two hours and have forgotten all about it. Another scene was shot for earlier in the film using the lighter, but didn't make the final cut. I'd have left it in to keep it fresher in our memories.
Felix Leiter, recently widowed and crippled, seems remarkably chipper at the film's end.
I suppose Licence to Kill is an example of a film which is brilliant taken on its own terms, but was out of step with the times in which it was released. Hollywood had caught up with Bond in producing large-scale action films with humour.
Die Hard came out the previous year, while LTK was competing in the summer of '89 with Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and, above all, Batman.
It's hard to describe if you weren't there just how huge the Tim Burton Batman was in 1989. It really did suck up all the pop-culture attention and James Bond was The Spy who was Left Out in the Cold.
