LICENCE TO KILL A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
The second and last picture to have Timothy Dalton as a cold as ice James Bond is 1989's LICENCE TO KILL. If you like your 007s as dry as a dry martini, this may be the Bond for you. Otherwise, you may feel Dalton belongs with George Lazenby (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) as one of the actors who disgraced the Bond name.
LICENCE TO KILL features Robert Davi as a drug smuggler named Franz Sanchez, a sadomasochist who likes to whip his women when they don't obey. Sanchez's band of drug runners use maggots to camouflage their stash and sharks to munch on any drug enforcement officers who get too close. CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison) reappears from 1973's LIVE AND LET DIE, and promptly gets severely munched. Bond, who wants to go after the mutilators of his old friend Leiter, gets his "licence to kill" revoked by M when he refuses to give up the hunt.
Although set on Key West and on a Caribbean island, the cinematography by Alec Mills and the sets by Peter Lamont have none of the usual lovely travelogue aspect of Bond pictures. The mundane visuals fit right in with the bland storyline.
Where are the signature chase scenes, the sexual humor and the romantic trysts that we come to Bond films for in the first place? Here the chase scenes are mainly saved until the end.
In the perfect Bond setup, he runs out of gas in a speedboat on a romantic evening with a beautiful woman, Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell). Dalton's reaction? He is miffed about the delay. Although his Bond finally agrees to a sexual encounter with her, it is only because she pressures him. The old James sought out such opportunities without being coerced. The only genuinely erotic scene occurs later when Bond sticks his hand up Pam's skirt, but he's just going for her hidden gun. Dalton is dead serious, having little time to waste on women or humor.
(LICENCE TO KILL is the first Bond film to be rated PG-13 - they since have all had this rating - which is partly because of the addition in the early 1980s of the PG-13 rating and partly because of the increased amount of blood and profanity in LICENCE TO KILL.)
A white-suited Wayne Newton, providing some much needed humor, appears in a cameo as a televangelist on the prowl for donations. His real purpose is to convey the wholesale price of drugs and negotiate drug deals on the air in secret.
After a languid and completely formulaic movie, the pace finally picks up at the end in a long chase scene using large gasoline trucks. When the only memorable visual is a semi doing a wheelie, you know the picture is in trouble.
LICENCE TO KILL runs too long at 2:13. It is rated PG-13 for profanity and violence and would be fine for kids around 9 and up.
My son Jeffrey, age 9, thought the movie was just okay. He gave it ** and complained that it was too bloody.
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