Bond Films: License to Kill

Licenses to Kill is the second and last Dalton Bond film. It's not bad, but I could not stop thinking of this as the Just Say No [to Drugs] Bond, the Nancy Reagan Bond if you will. With a young Cary Lowell and a young Benicio Del Toro, it's a bit of a treat, and the nod towards the rise of televangelism is a fun bit at the end.

Bond renounces his position in MI6, has his "Licence to Kill" revoked, and sets out on a one-man rampage against a Colombian drug lord - very topical in the late eighties. While dated in tone, it plays like a more serious version of Live And Let Die - the last time Bond took on drug lords, arms-for-drug-money transactions excepted.

The basic plot of License to Kill is: while attending the weekend of CIA sidekick Felix Leiter in Key West, Bond and Leiter are enlisted to capture drug lord Carlos Sanchez, which they do by attaching a helicopter via cable to his light plane before parachuting into the wedding. Sanchez later escapes and takes revenge by murdering Leiter's wife and dipping him into shark-infested waters, wherein he loses a leg, yet survives. Bond takes revenge on the inside man who arranged these events, and runs away from MI6 after being admonished at Hemingway House. Bond manages to recruit a pilot (the girl, Cary Lowell, future Law & Order alum and Mrs. Richard Gere), and manages to both sabotage a drug shipment and work his way into Carlos' inner circle as a mole. Bond learns of Sanchez's big power play and accompanies him to his manufacturing center, fronted in part by a televangelist played here by Wayne Newton. Bond's true purpose is discovered, and after dropping Benicio into an industrial shredder and chasing down the bad guys in tractor-trailer chase, Bond torches the gasoline-soaked villain with his wedding gift - an engraved lighter - and then gets his job back.

There is a lot of physical disbelief in the stuntwork here - hauling away a plane with a helicopter, popping a wheelie in a tractor-trailer - that is a bit above a good Bond film, but otherwise this is pretty watchable. Extremely topical at the time, it might have been the most relatable, and therefore believable, Bond film for the American market. License to Kill combines a lot of of classic Bond but doesn't quite hit classic status: underwater fighting  fabulous Caribbean scenery, and an emotional stake for Bond, regardless of how believable the wedding itself was. The film is violent, but no more for its time, and it scales well compared to past Bonds.

Timothy Dalton tends to get short shrift as a Bond and I don't understand why. He's handsome, capable, perhaps a bit more brooding than past Bonds, but he's no slouch; he's different, is all. The two films he was in are solid Bond films, and considerably better than some of those of his forebears. Let us not speak of The Man With The Golden Gun, or Diamonds Are Forever. When I saw this movie as a teenager, I was pretty stoked that someone younger and more active was taking over from Roger Moore, who was nearly my grandparents' age at the time.