The Worst Of The Bond Films? License To Kill Gets My Vote!

The Good: Dares to push the character relationships farther . . .
The Bad: Terrible direction/editing, Horrible acting, Painfully dull plot, Ridiculous characters
The Basics: License To Kill is a James Bond film that goes nowhere . . . poorly.


As I near the end of my reviews of the James Bond film franchise, (Tomorrow Never Dies is now the only one I have not yet seen!), it is funny what excites me about the franchise now. At the outset of License To Kill, I suddenly found myself irrationally excited by seeing Everett McGill (from Twin Peaks, reviewed here!), Anthony Zerbe (from Star Trek: Insurrection, reviewed here!) and Benicio Del Toro! For a franchise that has done so much, that License Of Kill lacked a strong plot hook (as opposed to performers who I recognized from other works), it was unsurprising to me that it underperformed at the box office.

Unfortunately, given how straightforward and surprisingly linear License Of Kill is, the excitement for the film pretty much begins and ends with the performers in it. Sadly, the initial excitement of performers who appeared in License To Kill quickly dissipated based on the performances they gave. License To Kill is one of the most straightforward and least exciting Bond movies. License To Kill is hinged almost entirely on the premise that James Bond would risk everything for his occasional CIA ally and counterpart, Felix Leiter.

Opening with James Bond preparing to act as Best Man at Felix Leiter’s wedding, the CIA Agent gets sidetracked with assisting with a DEA bust. They capture drug lord Franz Sanchez and manage to make it to Leiter’s wedding on time. Sanchez successfully bribes a DEA agent to orchestrate his escape. The drug lord then captures Felix and has a shark bite off his leg! Bond allies with Leiter’s partner, Sharkey, until M arrives and tells Bond to leave Key West. Revoking Bond’s credentials and license to kill, James Bond strikes out on his own to avenge Leiter and stop Sanchez.

Bond rescues Leiter’s last contact who knew about Sanchez’s operation, Pam Bouvier. Together, Bond and Bouvier travel to Isthmus City, where Bond hunts Sanchez. Bond uses the millions of dollars that he stole from Sanchez during his escape to pay Bouvier to get him to Isthmus City and open a line of credit at the bank Sanchez owns. Q comes to Bond’s aid with tech that he uses to stop a transaction that would unite Sanchez’s operation with an Asian syndicate.

License To Kill is riddled with problems, not the least of which is how Felix Leiter and Bond are treated as best friends in the film. Bond is recast throughout the franchise and the implication has been that James Bond is an alias – as are M, Q, and Moneypenny. By the same logic of recasting, Felix Leiter is also an alias, used by the CIA. License To Kill seems to want to defy the idea that Bond is an alias, by referencing that Bond was once married. It can be blown off as this particular Bond’s backstory, but the implication is more for the idea that this Leitner was with the old Bond when his wife was killed and that they are the same person.

The kicker in License To Kill is that Bond is monolithic and dull (more from the writing than Timothy Dalton’s performance) and Carey Lowell’s Pam Bouvier – while she might be played as over-the-top in a few scenes – is far more interesting. Bouvier holds her own with Bond, not simply succumbing to his charm . . . which is good because Bond is less-than-charming in License To Kill.

License To Kill is notable, as well, for the terrible direction and editing by John Glen. Glen makes some terrible cuts (like a person who is thrown out of a plane and barely falls before the shot cuts to something else) and uses some remarkably stiff takes. The stunts are so obviously choreographed that they look entirely unreal and the chases and shooting scenes are so poorly put together that frequently people aren’t even aiming in the right direction to make the shots they do.

Timothy Dalton is fine playing Bond as shaken, but it is not the highlight of his career. In fact, all the notable actors who appeared in License To Kill that I liked give mediocre, at best, performances. License To Kill is just all-around bad and a disappointment for both James Bond fans and anyone who likes quality cinema.

For other works with Robert Davi, please visit my reviews of:
The Expendables 3
“Simon’s Choice” - VR.5

1/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Back When There Was A U.S.S.R., James Bond Was Smarter In The Living Daylights!

The Good: Timothy Dalton’s performance, Most of the realism, Decent plot and villain
The Bad: Still utilizes a number of tired spy thriller conceits, Supporting actress problems.
The Basics: One of the better James Bond films, The Living Daylights finds Bond chasing down Soviet agents who are working with a ruthless arms dealer whose profit motive sets him against both the British and Soviets.


As excitement grows over the casting announcement for SPECTRE, the latest installment in the James Bond film franchise, I find myself catching up on the last few James Bond films I had not yet seen and reviewed. I’ve made it to the Dalton years and after watching The Living Daylights, I’m somewhat surprised that Dalton only got two films as James Bond! Dalton’s acting is enough to recommend The Living Daylights; after a stale formula of James Bond spy films, Dalton and writers Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson reinvigorate the franchise with a more realistic spy thriller than some of the other Bond films.

What makes The Living Daylights worth watching is the way it delightfully mixes the realistic and smart with the utterly ridiculous and over-the-top spy thriller conceits. Timothy Dalton’s James Bond enters a new room and looks around to make sure the building is clear; during the usual high-speed chase, he has his sidekick Bond girl looking at a map to give him information on where they are going. Sure, Bond’s Aston-Martin turns into a vehicle so complex that it rivals the Batmobile, but for much of The Living Daylights realism for the villains, heroes, and equipment dominate.

The 00 Section is tapped to infiltrate a radar station as part of a “test” of British security. The game turns very real when one of the agents starts using live rounds and James Bond has to do all he can to stop the corrupted “agent.” Managing to save civilian lives and dispatch the villain, Bond goes to Czechoslovakia where he is tasked with dispatching KGB snipers who are protecting a defector that will help cripple the Soviet Union. Smuggled out through the Trans-Siberian Pipeline, General Koskov’s extraction seems to go well, until the KGB sends a ruthless assassin to the safe house Koskov is moved to and they retake the defector. Condemned for not killing a Soviet sniper during the initial extraction, Bond is ordered to terminate General Pushkin, who is believed to be responsible for disrupting the test and retaking Koskov.

Tailing the cello playing would-be assassin Kara Milovy leads Bond to realize that Koskov’s extraction was only a ruse. Pushkin, in the meantime, moves to cancel a sizable order of next generation weapons from the psychopathic Brad Whitaker, a West Point drop-out who is now a weapon’s dealer. With Kara’s unwitting help, Bond learns about Koskov and discovers that he is exceptionally wealthy (which, as a Soviet General, he should not be) and has given Milovy fabulous gifts like a Stratavarius. The cello connects Koskov to Whitaker and puts Bond on course for Whitaker’s villa in Tangiers and a showdown between the intelligence operative and the mercenary.

The Living Daylights is one of the Bond movies that is not short on charm. While the relationships Bond finds himself in – a casual fling with a brat in the teaser and a weirdly forced encounter on a Ferris wheel with Kara (she’s still enamored with Koskov at the time!) – seem particularly passionless and forced, much of the rest of the film is a triumph of reality over spy fantasy. Bond leaps into an amusement park with a gun drawn and is met by a family whose screams and running in the opposite direction are a welcome splash of cold water on the franchise.

In a similar fashion, Bond’s encounter with General Pushkin is a wealth of realism that sets The Living Daylights apart from other Bond films. Pushkin is able to signal his bodyguard because he has tech similar to Bond’s; he talks his way out of death the way Bond does and his loyalty to his military and government puts him at odds with Koskov’s corruption and Whitaker’s organization. After shooting Pushkin, Bond shoots out the spotlight that would expose him, which is equally sensible.

While Dalton and John Rhys-Davies (who plays Pushkin) are phenomenal, Maryam d’Abo’s performance as Kara Milovy is somewhat unimpressive. Similarly, Andreas Wisniewski’s Necros is presented as monolithic and dull. Jeroen Krabbe and Joe Don Baker hold their own as the film’s villains. Krabbe is charismatic enough to play a character who has a longstanding relationship with James Bond and is able to dupe him with the strength of his lies and the force of his personality. He’s a good adversary and he has more character than Joe Bon Baker’s Whitaker.

Ultimately, the performance issues from the supplementary players are not enough to seriously detract from the quality of Timothy Dalton’s performance and the superior writing for the plot and characterization of the villains (James Bond’s somewhat obvious devotion to duty having been well-established and unwavering even here). That makes The Living Daylights one of the Bond films that remains worth watching!

For other works with Timothy Dalton, please check out my reviews of:
The Tourist
Toy Story 3
Looney Tunes: Back In Action
The Lion In Winter

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not The Bottom-out Of James Bond, A View To A Kill Is More Average Than Empty.

The Good: Good direction/editing, Interesting plot and villain characterization, Good actors
The Bad: No superlative performances, Predictable plot progression, No character development
The Basics: Roger Moore’s final outing as 007 has James Bond confronting an industrialist who wants to take over Silicon Valley through any means he has to!


For me, it is interesting to recall when I lost interest in one trend and got into a new portion of my life. My James Bond Phase was followed by my love of the Star Trek franchise and, despite seeing Never Say Never Again, the last James Bond film I watched before I got into Star Trek was A View To A Kill. I recall seeing A View To A Kill on a sleepover with a friend (who is now, alas, dead), but never again . . . until tonight!

A View To A Kill is the final James Bond film that starred Roger Moore and the common complaint with it was that Moore was too old to credibly be James Bond. I did not find that to be so when watching A View To A Kill (though I also have no issues with Peter Capaldi playing Doctor Who!). Instead, the film is hampered by many of the usual problems with James Bond movies at this point; the plots are fairly predictable, the characters do not develop, and the one-liners have gotten more flat than witty.

Recovering a microchip from a dead agent, James Bond evades a swarm of Russian agents by skiing to a submarine (cleverly disguised as an iceberg). Returning to Britain, James Bond learns from Q that 003’s death came as a result of the microchip technology he was smuggling out for MI-6. The microchip, which would not be damaged from the radiation from a nuclear attack, is a prototype that the British are desperate to keep out of the hands of the Russians. The nuclear-safe microchip is produced by Zorin Industries and after visiting a horse race that Max Zorin is at, James Bond is on the trail; trying to find how the Zorin Industries chip ended up on Russian hands and prevent the Russians from developing the technology. After his best lead is killed by Zorin’s assistant, May Day, in France, going undercover as St. John Smythe to the Zorin estate under the guise of being a horse buyer, James Bond hunts for leads between Zorin and the Russians.

Embroiled in a scheme that uses the horse trading to embezzle money to the industrialist’s other interests, James Bond tips his hand to Zorin and he tries to find the weak link in Zorin’s network. Underneath the stables, Bond and Tibbett (Bond’s sidekick for the mission) find Zorin’s secret lab where Bond is able to deduce how Zorin is fixing the races that his horse, Pegasus, wins. They also discover a stockpile of the advanced microchips, which leads Bond to wonder who Zorin is truly working for and he becomes determined to stop Zorin’s plan. Accompanied by a geologist who Zorin screwed out of her grandfather’s business, James Bond (occasionally James Stock of The London Times) works to protect the international free market from Zorin’s corrupt attempt to dominate the microchip industry and technology.

A View To A Kill is an industrial domination plotline; James Bond films by this point tend to alternate between the world domination, industrial espionage and diabolical destruction plots. The film features the familiar elements of a James Bond film – Bond flirts with a blonde and ends up in bed with May Day – and is more mediocre than it is bad. The usual chase sequences in Bond movies are present; in this case a ski sequence, a horseback riding divergence, and a climactic car chase in a fire engine. None of these sequences are especially memorable, though they look more fluid than most similar sequences in other Bond films.

What separates A View To A Kill from many other James Bond films is the caliber of the actors present. The acting may not be spectacular, but the presence of Christopher Walken as Zorin and Patrick Bauchau as his sidekick, Scarpine, elevate the usually monolithic roles to a level where the viewer at least feels they are watching credible characters. Actress Grace Jones was a bodybuilder, so she is entirely believable as the hired assassin working for Zorin.

Max Zorin is a former KGB agent and he is reasonable and credible as an industrialist who wants to produce and distribute microchips to take over Silicon Valley. Zorin is essentially an overzealous industrialist who wants to compete in a market that is essentially a monopoly held by the Americans. That allows James Bond to go to San Francisco and could be a compelling statement coming from a James Bond film. Alas, though, after his motivations are revealed, Max Zorin reverts to a very typical James Bond villain who will use all sorts of ridiculous means to try to achieve his goals. Instead of just cutting the businessmen who don’t want to play ball with him out of the plan, Zorin starts killing them (via May Day) and that takes the elements of the film that played closer to realism back toward the over-the-top conceits of the spy thriller. Christopher Walken plays Zorin as a very low-key psychopath for most of the film, though the role is a good one for Walken as he has the delivery style that sells the cold cruelty of the character. Unfortunately, A View To A Kill degenerates into a plot that is remarkably similar to Lex Luthor’s plan in Superman (reviewed here!) and without the tongue-in-cheek dialogue, it seems absolutely absurd. In this context, sinking part of California for personal gain is almost laughable as opposed to clever.

Moore does well as James Bond in his final outing. He never seems tired or bored with the role, which is important. In fact, the worse aspect of his performance in A View To A Kill is the fact that he has more on-screen chemistry with Lois Maxwell’s Moneypenny than he does with any of the younger performers brought on for obvious sex appeal. To be fair to Moore, many of the reversals in A View To A Kill do not hinge on James Bond (one of the times Bond’s life is saved it is because Zorin’s people do not know who they are looking for an there just happens to be an industrial terrorist in the same water as Bond for them to capture and kill!). Tanya Roberts’s Stacey Sutton is not bad in her role, though she has some issues with delivering the technobabble credibly, but she and Moore have little on-screen spark in their roles.

Director John Glen manages to make A View To A Kill look wonderful. The sets are beautiful and this is a James Bond film that does not suffer from anywhere near the number of awkward cuts that usually plague these films. On DVD and Blu-Ray, A View To A Kill comes packed with commentaries and featurettes on how the film was made and they are informative, but not enough to sell the source material as being anything better than what it is. A View To A Kill is a painfully average spy thriller made with decent components to appear bigger than it actually is.

For other James Bond films with Roger Moore, please check out my reviews of:
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy

5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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“James Bond And The Temple Of Doom:” Octopussy Is Fun Bond!

The Good: Most of the acting is good, Great banter, Fun characters
The Bad: Editing issues in stunt scenes, No real character development
The Basics: In one of the more fun James Bond films, Bond follows a trail of art forgeries to India where he encounters an all-woman cult whose henchmen are funneling money to the Russians.


As I trundle through the James Bond film franchise, I have been finding the films to be increasingly monotonous and repetitive. I’ve been surprised, actually, at how erratic the franchise can be. There are any number of Bond films that start off good, but take an unfortunate turn for the absurd in their later half. Octopussy is not one of those; it’s actually a fun James Bond film that has good banter, enjoyable reversals and a self-referential nature until it turns serious in the last third of the film. Director John Glen and the actors in Octopussy pull it off, though, so the film does not seem at all erratic, it seems like a film that logically progresses.

Octopussy is a trip back to Cold War thinking, executed with all of the trappings of Cold War filmmaking. What I’ve been noticing about the late-70s/early-80s James Bond films is how very poor the stunt editing was for these action movies. While Octopussy brilliantly plays off the paranoia and conspiracy theories of the 1980s as far as Communist domination went, the execution of the stories is a bit more visually erratic for those who pay attention to the films they are watching. Octopussy bookends a story of Soviet warmongering with a detective story involving all the murky characters and fun one-liners one might expect from a James Bond movie.

After using a woman as a distraction to destroy a Cuban military installation, James Bond is called back to England. In East Berlin, a clown (actually an MI-6 Agent, 009) is killed getting a Faberge egg to the British Embassy. Bond is assigned to find who is selling the Faberge eggs, as British Intelligence believes it is an attempt by the Russians to raise capital. At a top secret Kremlin meeting, the warmongering General Orlov argues in favor of a strong military strike against non-Communist targets, but is kept in check by Gogol and the Premier. Attending the art auction, Bond bids up the real egg (which he swaps with the counterfeit) to draw out the culprit who is funding the Soviets. That puts Bond on the tail of Magda, who pressures Kamal Khan into buying the egg. Exposing Kamal Khan as a cheater in the casino, Bond is hunted by Gobinda (Khan’s thug) and willingly seduced by Magda, who steals the real Faberge egg with a tracking device in it.

Tailing Kamal Khan to India, Bond works with local intelligence agents to discover who is behind the counterfeits and sale of actual Russian artifacts. This leads him to Octopussy and her woman-filled island. While Octopussy is raising an army of empowered women, Kamal Khan and Gobinda are using her traveling circus as a front to acquire a Soviet nuclear weapon from Orlov. As Bond tracks the clues and exposes Orlov’s agenda to detonate a nuclear bomb to lead to disarmament in Eastern Europe (leaving it ripe for conquest), he must figure out who his allies are and work with them to stop the Soviet plan.

Octopussy is fun above all else, but when Octopussy herself comes into the film, it becomes a little murkier. While Orlov, Khan, and Khan’s agendas are completely clear, Octopussy’s role in the conspiracy is a bit more opaque. In many ways, Octopussy is a supporting character and a witless pawn in the movie that bears her name, which is unfortunate. Octopussy plays herself off as a female version of James Bond and after strong female supporting characters in The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, the idea that Octopussy is a dupe is disappointing. That Octopussy comes through in the end is refreshing, but it’s a long way to go to truly appreciate her character.

That said, Maud Adams plays Octopussy well. She is strong, confident, and not as obvious as Kristina Wayborn’s Magda (who has an immediately more substantive role in the film). Roger Moore’s penultimate outing as James Bond has him energetically running, shooting and reasoning his way through the conspiracy. Moore plays Bond with credible charisma and it makes the editing all the more unfortunate. James Bond is witty and vibrant in the movie . . . so when one notices how poorly the stunt sequences are cut, it seems extra sloppy. One of the stunt doubles for Moore, who does a Tarzan yell while swinging from vine to vine in India is especially obvious given his hair is not even the same color!

That said, Octopussy is one of the more enjoyable James Bond films; one that has character (if not character development), a plot that is much more grounded in the real world with real-world motivations and one-liners enough to reinvigorate a pretty tired franchise.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Lost In A Winter Wonderland: For Your Eyes Only Has James Bond Off Course!

The Good: Most of the acting is good, Grounded, surprisingly sensible, plot
The Bad: Formulaic plot progression, No character development, Terrible editing
The Basics: In a disappointing James Bond film, Bond looks for a British coding system in the frozen alps and underwater to keep it from falling into Soviet hands . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah.


After a point, it is hard to make a pulp novel series into a compelling movie franchise. James Bond has become a tough sell for me by the point For Your Eyes Only comes up in the franchise for exactly that reason. Indeed, by For Your Eyes Only, there is very little that James Bond has not already done. In fact, the longer For Your Eyes Only goes on, the more it feels like a “Best Of Bond” compilation. There is an erratic quality to For Your Eyes Only, made worse by the choppy editing (especially in the fight sequences) and a thin plot.

What little momentum For Your Eyes Only had at the beginning is cut when James Bond gets mired in an extended skiing sequence in the Alps followed by long underwater sequences and then an interminably long mountain climbing sequence. The thin plot is fleshed out with a bizarre ice skater subplot and slower, drawn-out action sequences that serve to do little else other than get the movie over two hours. But so many “already done” elements of the James Bond franchise are here: there’s a chase on skis, a diving sequence, a boat that is attacked, a sidekick for Bond, another Bond sidekick who gets killed early on, etc.

Picked up after visiting his wife’s grave, James Bond’s helicopter pilot is killed and his helicopter is hijacked via remote control by Blofeld. Killing Blofeld, Bond heads back to MI-6 headquarters. A British vessel is attacked by terrorists off the Georgian coast. British agents attempt to find the ship, but Melina Havelock and her parents are attacked and the mission fails. Bond is assigned by the Minister Of Defense to take up the Havelock’s mission and recover the order system from aboard the missing, presumed wrecked, ship. When Bond tries to infiltrate the compound of Gonzales, the man who hired the hit on the Havelocks, he is captured . . . and rescued by Melina who kills Gonzales. Fleeing together, Bond promises to find the people responsible for the death of Melina’s parents.

Heading to Cortina in Italy, Bond encounters hitmen, including the notorious Locque. Surviving Locque’s attacks, Bond makes it to Corfu, where he is reunited with Melina. There, he finds both Kristatos and Columbo, rival gangsters who implicate each other in the disappearance of the British naval vessel. Finding that Kristatos has the resources for a serious salvage operation, Bond finally manages to defeat Locque. Bond and Melina then go after the St. George. Recovering the British technology – and dispatching many goons in the process – Bond and Melina are captured by Kristatos. Eager to meet with the Russian general who hired him, Kristatos takes the time to try to kill Bond and Melina. With the aid of the fleeing skating coach, Bond’s team infiltrates Kristatos’s lair to prevent the Soviet Union from getting their hands on codes that would incapacitate the British military.

For Your Eyes Only is, for a change, a remarkably straightforward James Bond spy film plot. Kristatos is not out for world domination; he’s just out to make a buck. He behaves like a bounty hunter with an underworld credibility that seems very realistic for the real world. Despite silly gadgets being developed by Q, in the field, Bond uses an eminently practical exploding car. For Your Eyes Only is a surprisingly viable spy caper (despite the impractical lengths to which human endurance is pushed in the movie).

On the character front, For Your Eyes Only features a Bond girl that James Bond does not immediately bed, which is a nice change of pace, and a younger Bond woman who Bond seems morally opposed to having sex with. Melina is given more character traits, as she is a woman out for revenge, though that is not played out in an irrational or unpleasant way. Bond does not really grow or develop in For Your Eyes Only, but the character is charming . . . though he does not use much in the way of charm in the film.

The acting in For Your Eyes Only is good. Roger Moore is a decent James Bond, though he uses very little of his innate charisma in the role, which is somewhat disappointing. But Julian Glover is a good villain as Kristatos, keeping the role grounded. Carole Bouquet might be one of the strongest, most independent Bond women and she has a substantive role (if an underdeveloped character arc). For Your Eyes Only is also notable in that it is the first motion picture role for Charles Dance, who is immensely popular once again thanks to his role in the third season of Game Of Thrones (reviewed here!), but his thug role is little more than a cameo.

Ultimately, For Your Eyes Only is a let-down, a movie without enough substance or challenge to it that it has to be padded . . . and the filler feels like exactly what it is.

For other James Bond films, please check out my reviews of:
Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Skyfall

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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