Bondathon: Licence to Kill

“In my line of business you prepare for the unexpected.”
“What is your line of business?”

“I help people with problems.”

“Problem solver?”

“More of a…problem eliminator.”

I could gush all day about how great The Living Daylights is, but when it comes down to it, I’m probably the only one who feels that strongly about it. While reviews were generally favorable, most audiences weren’t quite sure about Dalton’s darker tone to the role, seeing as they were more akin to Moore’s jokes and romances. But, the producers had a contract, and they were going to find a way to make these audiences love Dalton, so they looked at some of the action movies of the time. You can imagine what happened next. This is Licence to Kill, the most underrated Bond movie in the whole series, in my opinion.

The movie starts out actually rather cheerfully, as we zoom in on a scene of Bond, Felix Leiter (David Hedison), and Leiter’s contact Sharkey (Frank McRae) as they drive to Leiter’s wedding. A DEA helicopter flies by with a sign on the window saying, “follow us,” and Leiter obliges. When they meet up, the copter pilots explain that they have the go ahead to arrest Franz Sanchez, a well known drug lord from the area. Leiter doesn’t hesitate and jumps at the offer, bringing Bond along and telling Sharkey to explain the situation to his soon-to-be bride.

We then cut to a scene where Sanchez (Robert Davi) is whipping his girlfriend Lupe (Talisa Soto) for being unfaithful (an already decidedly darker turn for the series). As he finishes, he leaves his compound and starts making his way to his private airport, where Leiter, Bond, and the DEA intercept him. After some slow-mo camera, a shootout occurs, and Sanchez takes off in a plane. Bond and Leiter take off in the helicopter behind him and when they catch up, Bond uses quick thinking to jump out and wrap a rope around the tail of the plane so the helicopter can then tow it in for Sanchez to be arrested. After doing so, they fly to the chapel where the marriage is taking place and Bond and Felix parachute down, kicking off the wedding and the film entirely.

After the credits, the film resumes on the festivities surrounding the wedding. Meanwhile, Sanchez is being loaded into a truck by one of Leiter’s CIA colleages, Ed Killifer (Everett McGill) to be transported to prison. As the truck and convoy are crossing a bridge, Killifer, having been bribed by Sanchez to the tune of $2,000,000, knocks out the truck driver and drives into the ocean, giving him and Sanchez the chance to escape by use of a minisub. Meanwhile, the party is ending at the Leiters’ house, and Bond is driving off for the night. Felix and his wife walk into their bedroom to find two of Sanchez’s goons waiting for them.

Later, Felix wakes up in a wearhouse, tied up, and face to face with Sanchez, Sanchez’ henchman Dario (Benicio del Toro), and Killifer. After some talk, and revealing that they killed Felix’s wife Della, Sanchez opens up a shark pit below Leiter, lowering him inside until the shark has his fill on his leg. “This is merely business,” remarks Sanchez. Afterwards, Bond, who was supposed to fly out to Istanbul for a new mission, becomes suspicious of the amount of cops and agents around the airport and quickly races back to Felix’s house to find the dead Della and Felix’s mauled body inside. Later at the hospital, Sharkey remarks that he knows it must have been a shark bite, which gives Bond his first tip.

Bond and Sharkey drive out to a local marine warehouse owned by Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe). Krest swears to Bond that they don’t do anything with sharks anymore, but if he has any time later, to possibly stop by if he needs to look around. Bond obliges and leaves, only to return later in the evening to investigate. After a tussle with some guards, he runs into Killifer, whom Bond ties up in the same manor as Felix. Killifer tries to bribe Bond out of killing him, but Bond refuses, throwing the suitcase of money at Killifer and causing him to fall into the shark pit. “You want it? You keep it. Old buddy.”

The next day, one of Felix’s higher ups at the DEA is furious about Bond taking matters into his own hands. He takes Bond to the Hemingway house in Key West to meet M. M is of course angry that 007 didn’t make his way to Istanbul, and insists that Bond leave now, and M might forgive him. However, Bond refuses, knowing that he might be onto something regarding what happened to Felix and possibly getting rid of Sanchez for good, so he resigns.  M scoffs and demands that he give him his gun, but Bond quickly acts and escapes, M stopping anyone from shooting due to the amount of people around.

The next night, Bond goes out to sea to infiltrate Krest’s boat, the Wavekrest, to see if he can find anything on Sanchez. Inside he meets Lupe, who’s being held there for the time being while Sanchez gets himself situated after breaking out. Bond hides out for the night, and in the morning, notices that one of Krest’s men has killed Sharkey. He springs, emancipating revenge, and escapes the boat, hitching a ride on a plane holding $5,000,000 of Sanchez’s money. After this he goes to a bar to meet Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), a friend of Leiter’s, whom Bond manages to recruit for help after a bar fight involving Dario.

Bond travels to Sanchez’s country of Isthmus and deposits the money in a bank in Isthmus City under his name. Him and Bouvier (under guise as Bond’s accountant), then go to the casino, where Bond hits up the baccarat tables and seems to be having endless luck, which gains the attention of Sanchez. He sends Lupe down to collect Bond, who is brought upstairs to Sanchez’s room at the top of the casino. Sanchez and Bond sit down and talk a while, and Bond poses as a killer for a hire, a, “problem eliminator.” Sanchez says he’ll give some thought over Bond, but to have a good time in Isthmus nonetheless.

A few days later, using equipment from Q (who’s travelled to Isthmus on holiday), Bond sets up a plan to assassinate Sanchez from the viewpoint of a building across from the casino. His plans are foiled after some ninjas sent by Hong Kong Narcotics and MI6 attack him. They restrain him to a table and plan to arrest him before a small army hired by Sanchez busts inside and begin to shoot up the place. The ninjas and MI6 agents are killed, and Sanchez grabs an unconscious Bond, taking him back to his villa. The next morning, Sanchez asks Bond why all this was going on, and he explains that he was an ex-British agent, and these were men sent to kill Sanchez, hired by someone on the inside. Sanchez says he’ll investigate, but in the meantime insists that Bond stay at his villa.

Bond sneaks out and gets down to the Wavekrest with assistance from Bouvier and Q, which is set to come into Isthmus that night, and plants the money he found in the plane inside a hyperbaric chamber within the boat. As the vessel parks in the harbor and Sanchez boards to investigate, Bond hides out, watching as Sanchez kills Milton Krest in the same hyperbaric chamber that holds his money. The next morning, Sanchez pays Bond for his tip against Krest and then invites him on a trip to his cocaine manufacturing plant the next day. Meanwhile, Lupe, afraid for Bond’s safety, goes to Q and Bouvier for help to make sure that Bond makes it out okay.

The next day, Bond is taken along with various Chinese drug lords to Sanchez’s base of operations, hidden inside a meditation chamber owned by Joe Butcher (Wayne Newton). While being taken on a tour inside, Bond is found out by Dario, who puts a gun to Bond’s back and tells him to stay calm. Meanwhile, Bouvier commandeers a plane for Bond to use to escape, and infiltrates the base, waiting for some signal from Bond. Stressed out by Dario’s pressure, Bond tosses an experiment towards the wall, setting the lab on fire and revealing himself to Sanchez. The furious Sanchez kidnaps Bond and ties him up, laying him on a conveyor belt leading to a machine that breaks up blocks of cocaine. Bond manages to hang on, with Dario desperately trying to cut him free and make him die, but is saved by Bouvier in the end, which kicks Dario into the machine.

Bond and Bouvier fly out to catch up with Sanchez, who’s leading a convoy of a few tanker trucks holding his supply of cocaine. Bond jumps down, taking control of a truck, and commences to chase down Sanchez. After eluding gunfire, explosions, and a few stinger missiles, Bond is down to just him and Sanchez in two different trucks. Bond jumps from his to Sanchez’s and causes the truck to wreck, leaving the two gasoline smoked and on the ground in pain. Sanchez raises a machete to kill Bond, but stops as Bond asks him if he wants to know, “why?”.  He holds up a wedding present from Felix and Della, a lighter which says, “Love, Felix and Della,” and uses it to set Sanchez on fire, who then stumbles into the leaking tanker, causing it to explode and kill him. The film then ends with a party at Sanchez’s villa, with Bond and Bouvier eloping in the pool.

You might be asking me why I find this movie so underrated? Well, the general public wasn’t very happy with it. It was the lowest grossing Bond movie, and one of the lowest grossing movies of summer 1989. The extremely dark and dangerous tone I guess just didn’t resonate with audiences in certain places (yet these are the places that love the current dark tone that Bond films have nowadays). I, for one, love it. I love how no-nonsense Dalton is, and I love the idea that Bond would go this far to enact revenge on a friend. I just really like Dalton as Bond.

The rest of the casting is kind of hit and miss though. Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier is by far one of the most exciting Bond girls the franchise has had in a while, since For Your Eyes Only at least. Robert Davi is great as Sanchez, and once you hear all the methodizing he went through to become Sanchez, it only becomes clearer. And, I love Benicio del Toro in everything he’s ever in…I just do. However, then you have some of the misses. Talisa Soto is wooden as HELL as Lupe, and most of the henchmen and various small roles seem boring or unimportant. But it really doesn’t ruin this movie, not by far.

If you’ve ever seen this movie once and wrote it off as inferior to other adventures, I really suggest you take a second look, because it deserves it. Licence to Kill is a gem in this franchise, one you just don’t get often, and it rightfully deserves my rating of 4 out of 5 stars.