Word in Stone: Review of License to Kill

[tstone]

I'm a Bond fan. Unfortunately, the films, after the Connery era, fell into formula. And this formula was cemented for the longest time after the one early attempt to break it, the extremely neglected "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". This formula depended on stunts, spectacle, girls, guns gadgets and the person filling 007's tuxedo. Connery was great, of course. Moore, in my opinion, dragged down his movies as the Adam West of Bonds. His humor was cheesy rather than wry, and he had none of the danger or mystery. Brosnan was great. Haven't had a chance to see Daniel Craig yet, but word is he is awesome, and they also broke formula a bit with the film, which was needed.

And now, we get to Timothy Dalton. In "License to Kill", Bond's close CIA friend is accosted by a notorious drug dealer on his wedding day (Leiter's, not the drug dealer). Bond is determined to go after this guy. MI-6 forbids it. Bond loses his license to kill, but goes anyway. There's girls, exotic locations, the usual. And that's the problem. The villain was, frankly, a lightweight. There were serious possible repercussions from Bond's actions, but the "it's all good, start things over" ending was worthy of Star Trek: Voyager. And Dalton? I think he's great as an actor. LOVED him as Prince Barin in "Flash Gordon". But as Bond? He seems to be going for steely eyed dead inside. But it seems to be just sleep walking. He didn't suck, but he wasn't Bond. Not Moore bad, but just not that good.

[UNCLEagent]

I'm a Bond fan. ........ Haven't had a chance to see Daniel Craig yet.

I won't question your patriotism, but I do question if you are a REAL Bond fan. :p

[Boromir006]

A couple of reasons why it's a bad movie:

1. It doesn't feel like a Bond movie.
2. It looks cheap.
3. It's badly directed.
4. The acting is poor (see #3)
5. Wayne Newton is in it.

End of discussion!

[tstone]

An extremely obvious fake iguana.

[tstone]

Hey, I had two other Bond films on my stack, License to Kill and Goldeneye. and L2K, hadn't seen yet, either.

I love Goldeneye, but I've seen it before.

I wanted to hold out on Casino Royale, because I wanted to save the best for last...

Oh, I'm a real Trek fan, but will be the first to admit that most of Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise suck, too.

On Enterprise, they got their act together with Season four in a big way, tho.


I won't question your patriotism, but I do question if you are a REAL Bond fan. :p

[WhiteKnight]

A couple of reasons why it's a bad movie:

1. It doesn't feel like a Bond movie.
2. It looks cheap.
3. It's badly directed.
4. The acting is poor (see #3)
5. Wayne Newton is in it.

End of discussion!

I'll go with these points, but I'd like to hear a little more about why feel this way, Boromir.

I'll agree with point one because the scoring of the piece was way too far removed from John Barry's work during the previous few Bond flicks. Too much too soon in that respect.

I also agree with point two, but I personally can't tell you why. Ordinarily I'd have blamed this on a change in director, but I don't think there was a change in director between Daylites and LTK. Maybe there was a change in the director of photography. I'll have to check.

Can't really say I noticed bad direction on this one. Mind giving me an example? As for bad acting, I don't think there is a Bond film from either the 70's or 80's that I watched for the Oscar caliber performances of the actors. Although I do have to agree that Wayne Newton should stick to singing. I sort of wish he'd stop doing that, too, but I guess the guy's got to make a living somehow.

On the whole, LTK is great 80's popcorn flick if you can just ignore the fact it was supposed to be a James Bond movie.

[Kara Milovy]

Wayne Newton cracked my sh!t up.

[BeauButabi]

I LOVE LTK! I sorta understand what you mean when you say it "looks cheap", but it's not something I've thought about before and probably still won't bother me. It's got great action (probably the best "action" movie of the Bond series), a great story (sorta felt like a spritual sequel to OHMSS since they didn't really handle Bond getting revenge for his wife very well at all), a great Bond (Dalton's my favorite), great music (really liked it myself), perfectly fine acting (though I though Lowell could've done better). One thing I don't like, though, is that the casino scenes seem to drag the film's pace down a little. Other than that it's an awesome movie and not far from the top of my ranking list.

[Space Tycoon]

I recall seeing LTK back in the halcyon days of the summer of '89. Well, they seemed that way looking back. I remember leaving the theatre disappointed, having been very impressed with TLD. It's actually not a bad film, as someone said it fits in well with "Lethal Weapon" type 80's action/adventure popcorn flicks. But something about it didn't quite fit.

I also seem to vaguely remember that at the time, the Cold War was winding down and there was relatively little terrorism (at least as far as Americans were concerned) to worry about. The "War On Drugs" was dominating the headlines, what with the raging crack epidemic and the meteoric rise of Latin American druglords, and their operations stateside. "Pineapple-Face" (http://www.10-7.com/humor/mugshots/manuel_noriega.jpg) Noriega was the US government's villain du jour. I think he was much of the inspiration for Franz Sanchez.

By the way, the real Noriega is set for release on September 9th of this year... (http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/InmateFinderServlet?Transaction=NameSearch&needingMoreList=false&LastName=noriega&Middle=antonio&FirstName=manuel&Race=U&Sex=U&Age=&x=0&y=0)

As nasty as cocaine kingpins were, they never quite measured up to Soviet agents, evil geniuses bent on world domination, or apocalyptic terrorists. So Sanchez, bastard that he was, could never be at the same level as Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger.

I will say however, Talisa Soto as Lupe Lamora is quite possibly my favourite of the "Bond Girls."

But I think I mentioned that before.



.

[Boromir006]

I also agree with point two, but I personally can't tell you why. Ordinarily I'd have blamed this on a change in director, but I don't think there was a change in director between Daylites and LTK. Maybe there was a change in the director of photography. I'll have to check.

Can't really say I noticed bad direction on this one. Mind giving me an example? As for bad acting, I don't think there is a Bond film from either the 70's or 80's that I watched for the Oscar caliber performances of the actors. Although I do have to agree that Wayne Newton should stick to singing. I sort of wish he'd stop doing that, too, but I guess the guy's got to make a living somehow.The cheap look of the film comes largely from the lack of imagination and polish to the sets. They look very blocky and bland - really uninspired considering the work Peter Lamont has done on some of the other Bond films. Although according to the DVD documentary he was so sick because of the poor air quality on the Mexico locations that doctors thought he was dying. So maybe that's part of it.

Same director and DP as TLD, John Glen and Alec Mills. I don't like Glen's approach to Bond at all - it's far too jokey and rooted in a love of 1920's slapstick. Plus he doesn't trust the audience to be wowed by the stuntwork and usually cuts in a shot of a slack-jawed yokel staring at Bond's exploits. This approach was totally inappropriate for the tone of the story they were trying to tell, and Wayne Newton's presence only adds to that. Really the main issue I have with the direction is this tennis match between the gritty revenge drama and the jokey comic relief - the movie is lessened by the seeming need to include both. Pick one and stick with it. Don't give us an exploding head and "Bless your heart" in the same movie.

[Kara Milovy]

The cheap look of the film comes largely from the lack of imagination and polish to the sets. They look very blocky and bland - really uninspired considering the work Peter Lamont has done on some of the other Bond films. Although according to the DVD documentary he was so sick because of the poor air quality on the Mexico locations that doctors thought he was dying. So maybe that's part of it.

Same director and DP as TLD, John Glen and Alec Mills. I don't like Glen's approach to Bond at all - it's far too jokey and rooted in a love of 1920's slapstick. Plus he doesn't trust the audience to be wowed by the stuntwork and usually cuts in a shot of a slack-jawed yokel staring at Bond's exploits. This approach was totally inappropriate for the tone of the story they were trying to tell, and Wayne Newton's presence only adds to that. Really the main issue I have with the direction is this tennis match between the gritty revenge drama and the jokey comic relief - the movie is lessened by the seeming need to include both. Pick one and stick with it. Don't give us an exploding head and "Bless your heart" in the same movie.

It looks cheap because it was cheap. There had been no budget increase since Moonraker. As inflation chipped away at the budget, Eon was making films on less and less real money. The sets in Mexico were difficult to create because the Mexican workers were inexperienced and the warehouse space they started with was in very bad shape. Production delays and weather problems ate away the budget as well.