John Glen’s Licence to Kill (1989) is an easy candidate for the most underrated James Bond thriller.
It is also one of the most unusual.
The film’s brutal and risky story made it the first 007 thriller to merit a PG-13 rating.
This was the second and final film starring Timothy Dalton as Bond, and it is his finest performance and delivery.
Glen’s film opens with a pre-title sequence that, rather than functioning as a standalone mini-Bond movie, actually sets up much of the plot. Felix Leiter (David Hedison), Bond’s best friend and fellow agent, is getting married and interrupts his wedding to corner Sanchez (Robert Davi), a Latin American drug lord.
This prelude ends with a cheeky joke (both Leiter and Bond arrive at the wedding on time) and features a surprising opening trick. However, the smiles and the elegant title song by Gladys Knight do not entirely reassure us.
Sanchez’s brutal introduction shows his unfaithful lover being whipped and his lover being killed off-camera. That, plus Davi’s menacing and affable presence, announces that there has never been a 007 movie like this.
The savagery is evident from the start and was a big surprise at the time. Bond films had never been so tough, at least until Daniel Craig came along decades later.
After the wedding, there’s a clever touch: Leiter’s lovely bride forces Bond to catch her bouquet. The melancholy moment, beautifully handled, references Bond “having been married once.” The fact that this film confidently reached back to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) to add that sad character detail is why these films matter.
The best thing about this series, which is undoubtedly “License to Kill,” is understanding who this character is and how time and a violent life have taken their toll on the martini-loving agent.
After discovering that Sanchez has not only kidnapped Leiter and his girlfriend, but has also brutally tortured them, Bond breaks protocol, loses emotional control and seeks revenge. With his license to kill revoked by the British Secret Service, he goes after Sanchez alone.
Sanchez is a cruel, carefree sadist, not the colorful megalomaniac Bond is used to. Davi, who could be laid-back and funny in other films, makes Sanchez look shark-like and disturbing.
Dalton and Davi are tremendous at this.
The pocket lighter, originally a wedding gift, becomes a crucial totem, symbolizing the urgency of Bond’s mission. It is also the humanity and self-discipline he is sacrificing to carry it out. Someone tells Bond, “You know we have laws in this country too.” However, Bond is not going after Sanchez in his country as a righteous warrior, but as a vigilante.
It’s interesting how Sanchez and Bond end up mirroring each other throughout the film (there’s even a big stretch where Bond pretends to be her ally).
Benicio del Toro, in a very early role, is effective as Sanchez’s loathsome brother. There’s a bar fight right out of “Road House” (also 1989), in which Bond gets into a fight with the extraordinary character actor Branscombe Richmond. And the terrific Cary Takagawa makes a strong impression in the second act.
Q, played by Desmond Llewelyn, enters the film later than expected and gives a crisp and welcome performance. Seeing Q active in the field is fun.
Carey Lowell is very good as CIA agent Pam Bouvier. She doesn’t play Bond’s sidekick or a sexy kitten, but someone who rises to the occasion.
“Licence to Kill” is one of the more disciplined 007 thrillers, as it doesn’t include too many villains or subplots. While it focuses primarily on Colombian drug lords, there is a subplot involving a corrupt televangelist, played by Wayne Newton.
Newton does here what he did in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990): his villain is funny at first, but also reveals himself to be a vile corrupter of trust. Newton plays the role of an oddball and does not become over the top.
In one of the most striking scenes, M (played here for the last time in the series by Robert Brown) confronts Bond at the Hemingway House and rightly accuses him of having “a private vendetta.”
Bond attacks and runs away.
After decades of dull scenes featuring the likes of Sean Connery and Roger Moore playing Bond and making puns in M’s presence, seeing Dalton’s no-nonsense take on the character as he abandons his superior is impressive.
There are some nice little comic touches, like the recurring image of Sanchez’s pet chameleon wearing a diamond necklace, but they don’t take away from the comic relief. The carnage and merciless tone of “License to Kill” was very common in 1989, but it seems to be in line with the Daniel Craig era.
It also fits the opening act of 2002’s “Die Another Day,” before Pierce Brosnan’s last goofy entry ditched the rough edges and began its second act in a literal ice castle.
Michael Kamen’s excellent score has the same emotional cues as his scores for “Lethal Weapon” (appropriately not to feature John Barry’s lush orchestration this time around).
When it was released in the summer of 1989, its poor box office performance was blamed on competition. Both Batman and Lethal Weapon 2 dominated theaters that summer. However, mixed reviews and audience response (I recall many confessing to finding it “too serious,” “too dark,” and “too violent” at the time) were also a factor in its quick exit from multiplexes.
“License to Kill” marked the end of an era for these films, and not just by incorporating real-world dangers and powerful monsters as new villains. The opening sequence concludes with old-fashioned optical effects and fades, while “Goldeneye,” the first 007 film to arrive six years later and with Pierce Brosnan at the helm, uses jaw-dropping CGI surrealism in its opening credits.
The latter is now a staple of the series.
The PG-13 rating was no joke in 1989, as the shockingly cruel massacre stands in stark contrast to the bloodless shootouts of the previous installments. What seemed too “Miami Vice” and not escapist enough in 1989 was actually ahead of its time.
While it lacked the tradition of “The Living Daylights” and the comfortable bravado that Moore brought to Bond, “License to Kill” is far better.
The savage finale concludes with a final encounter between Bond and Sanchez that feels satisfying and poetic. Even Auric Goldfinger’s comeuppance wasn’t all that great.
The stunts are incredible throughout, particularly the moment when a tanker truck does a wheelie. The climax is made all the more thrilling by the lack of a soundtrack.
FACT: Timothy Dalton was hoping to play Bond for a third and final time and flirted with that project. However, the franchise’s producers insisted he stay on for multiple installments and he didn’t want to commit to such a big project. long-term agreementPierce Brosnan took over with 1995’s “GoldenEye.”
The end credits are worth mentioning because they declare “James Bond will return” (which was true, but not as soon as someone predicted) and there is a warning from the Surgeon General about smoking.
I guess the barbaric torture Sanchez inflicts on his victims is nothing compared to the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Additionally, Patti Labelle’s beautiful song “If You Asked Me To” was a hit in 1989, but would not emerge as such until it was covered by Celine Dion three years later.
Finally, if you only remember “Licence to Kill” as a footnote, the “overly serious” entry in the mostly oversized, quirky series, and think of Dalton as the equivalent of George Lazenby in Trivial Pursuit (Dalton the Bond twice, Lazenby the Bond once), here’s the rub:
If we look at these films, the order of value is considerably reversed. “Licence to Kill” is undoubtedly the best Bond film of the 1980s (if you’re curious, I’d say that “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” starring Lazenby, remains the best Bond film of the entire series).
This isn’t an insult to what Sean Connery, Moore, Brosnan and Craig brought to the table, it’s just that time isn’t always kind to a film franchise that began in 1962 with “Dr. No.” The gems of this series still shine, though, and “License to Kill,” one of the lesser James Bond thrillers, remains excellent.