6/21/2023 0 Comments Cast of licence to killHowever, the Daniel Craig Bond owes a huge debt to these two films. Brosnan had the charm of Moore, but – at least to begin with – tried to keep the series grounded, if with a lighter touch than Dalton. It’s a real pity, but the impact of the Dalton Bonds are clear. Dalton’s contract expired and he had had enough. He was contracted for three films, but with the failure of the studio and a takeover bid which was going to use 007 as a fire sale item legal matters intervened and the production was stalled. The unlikely choice for aficionados, but now I see the appeal. For once, John Glen – in his final outing as a Bond director – dispenses with too many double takes and comedy music choices.ĭalton has become something of a cult figure for Bond fans. And the chase of tankers down the mountain load with heroin-laced petrol is exciting and looks genuinely dangerous. The helicopter mid-flight hijacking of a light plane will influence the opening of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises. He has a code of honour that supersedes anything as simple-minded as duty. Rather than the obedient civil servant who’ll do anything for England, Dalton plays Bond as someone constantly disgruntled with his place in the world. Paradoxically, the further away from a Bond movie Dalton goes, the more this feels like the character Ian Fleming actually wrote. And even the interpolation of Q, doddering about, can’t muck things up. The plotting for the first time in a while is actually clever. With a plot lifted from Yojimbo, perhaps via Fistful of Dollars, Bond becomes the servant who sows discord in the enemy camp, planting paranoia like some espionage-driven Iago until he can come in for the kill. Perhaps influenced by the success of Miami Vice, Franz’s drug gang is actually threatening, with a young Benicio Del Toro as a particularly brutal henchman. From this point on, the film departs almost completely from the tried and tested template that Moore et al established. Bond gets suitably furious and decides to go after Franz and his gang against direct orders and has his License to Kill revoked by M in Hemingway’s house (for some reason). Franz himself escapes with the help of a corrupt DEA officer – Everett McGill who played Big Ed from Twin Peaks. In some ways, this is the most un-Bond like Bond movie thus far, throwing away much of the humour and taking the franchise in a dark direction that would see it awarded a 15 certificate for its shark chomping, head exploding gore.īond is attending Felix Lieter’s ( David Hedison) wedding when in the aftermath of the arrest of a dangerous drug lord, Franz ( Robert Davi), Leiter is kidnapped and tortured and his wife killed. But with License to Kill – originally entitled License Revoked until American audiences were polled and the makers realized everyone would think it was about a driving infraction – Timothy Dalton and John Glen go the whole hog. Diamonds Are Forever was supposed to be a revenger’s tragedy about Bond pursuing Blofeld, the germ of the idea is played out in the first scene, and then abandoned. The idea of Bond going rogue had been kicking around for a while. And License to Kill has the audacity to try and escape the Bond formula. Films that are actually films, unlike most of the Moore entries. But now watching them in the context of the slide in quality from Diamonds Are Forever on, they come as a refreshing brace of films. I saw the two films at the cinema probably at a time that I was already falling out of love with the franchise, putting away childish things etc. One of the happier results of this Bond Blog is that I’ve had the opportunity to totally reassess the Timothy Dalton Bonds. Posted by John Bleasdale on in action, All, drama, Film, Headline, Reviews, thriller | 0 comments
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