Heavy Bondage: License To Kill

My view is that either 007 is a wisecracking, cuff-shooting Casanova of the Secret Service or he is any old spy. In Licence To Kill the dandyism has gone out of the series. Rather than raising the movie's temperature, the much-publicised (though hardly shocking) violence demotes the film to the dominion of the ordinary.
- Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times, June 1989

Licence To Kill
Film: 1989
Book: n/a (but see comments)

Irreverent Synopsis: Bond is in Florida to attend Felix Leiter's wedding when they stop to bust drug kingpin and general most-wanted type Franz Sanchez. Sanchez breaks out while being convoyed with the aid of DEA man Killifer, who he buys off, and Sanchez and his men commit fairly horrible revenge on Leiter and his new bride. Bond goes on vendetta, causing a great deal of damage not just to the people he wants revenge upon but also on other operations (he wrecks a CIA scheme involving a missile purchase and a Hong Kong narcotics bust). In the process he is confronted by M and resigns from MI6 (by force), making him a vigilante killer for most of the film. The most improbable moment in the film is at the end when M offers him his job back ....

Major Observations: Many people hate this movie. Certainly many Americans seemed to either hate it or be unimpressed with it; to date only Golden Gun has had a lower American attendance. This film was not a flop - no Bond film has ever truly been a flop, in terms of making back its production costs - but it was clearly a disappointment. Most disappointing was that the film was very clearly meant to be appealing to an American audience and wasn't (but it was also against a slate of movies in a strong summer that included Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). So people have concluded that this is a lousy movie.

In fact, I believe it's not a lousy movie at all. It's a damned decent action film. The problem is that it's not a Bond film. If you took Bond out of this film and substituted a brash, American, Bruce Willis type - a rogue FBI man or DEA agent - and had him conduct the vendetta instead, the film as a whole would make a better impression.

Furthermore, this is the ultimate evolution of Timothy Dalton's Bond - Bond as assassin, completely without humor or emotion - so perhaps what this film has really been penalized for is showing everyone, reductio ad absurdum, exactly why the Dalton regime could not be allowed to continue.

Let's discuss this without thinking of Bond as Bond. Just think of him as some random character who happens to be named James Bond. Now, we have a completely humorless movie, with a cipher at its center - but that's okay, because it's a movie about a faceless sort of man who gets swept away by the power of vendetta, to the extent that he will sacrifice anyone and anything else in his way to get what he wants. Check. This is the part Timothy Dalton was born to play.

In order to keep this character's actions at all sympathetic, he'll need to be against villains who are even more repugnant than he is. Check. This movie has the nastiest cast of bad guys of any Bond film - petty, brutal, violent, whimsically sadistic, and thoroughly evil. Also well-done.

In order to redeem the character so that we don't wish him dead in the same flaming pit as the villains, we'll need some genuinely likable character who is also tough enough to keep up with him, one who will eventually make him aware of what he's throwing away. Check. We have one of the better female characters in a Bond film for that, and Q in his finest hour.

Oh, yes, and we'll need some really sterling eye candy, because this film needs to keep moving well, with lots of distractions, or it will become a lugubrious and depressing exercise. Check there too. Amid all the fuss and bother this film contains an absolutely audacious pre-credits sequence, a fine and improbable ski/boat/plane stunt from Bond (improbable enough that there's a wonderful sequence later where Krest tells Sanchez exactly what happens and Sanchez doesn't believe it), a really nicely staged barroom brawl, and a finale with tank trucks full of gasoline, a crop duster, and a lot of explosions - possibly the best extended sequence of its kind in any Bond film (choreographed, once again, by the excellent Remy Julienne team).

Yes, this is a thoroughly nasty film. All the deaths are horrid - the hyperbaric tank, a speargun used at point-blank range, a man coldly pushed from a plane, a man speared by a forklift, a man falling into a grinder, a man dropped into electric eels, a man locked into a drawer full of maggots, and let's not forget the shark tank .... This is not a film for the faint of heart, and it is definitely the most violent Bond film ever made ... but then, it's not really a Bond film, remember? If you remove all the Bond rules, it suddenly enables you to judge this film by an entirely different standard ... and you may not like films of that type, which is your prerogative, but the point is that it instantly goes from being a blot on the record to a fine example of the genre.

I admit that a great deal hinges on whether you sympathize with our hero. Personally, I do. What happens to Felix and Della is truly horrible, and even though Dalton's direct reaction to those events is not convincing (he doesn't do "sad" well - his strengths are shocked, enraged, irritated, and angry), I begin to get into his emotional space very shortly thereafter.

I confess, for example, that every time I watch the film I am rooting for him to get away from M, and even feel perversely pleased when the British and Hong Kong agents get killed by Sanchez. So what if the operation was blown and they were ostensibly good guys? Screw you; get the hell out of Bond's way. To me, the movie works because I feel the force and the damn-the-torpedoes attitude of Bond's vendetta, and when Pam finally gets through to him that there is more here than that, I feel the same quiet shock Bond does. It stands to reason, given that rage and viciousness are the only emotions Dalton is really any good at conveying, that they should be the only emotions I ever manage to empathize with in his Bond portrayal. This is a film about the consuming nature - and, yes, the vicious joy - of rage. If you can feel that, if you've ever felt that, then perhaps this film will work for you. If you can't, then you will likely just sit by and be horrified by the carnage.

The only places the film doesn't work are when they try to convince us that this is Bond - when Dalton is called upon to be suave. He doesn't have to be suave with Pam (Carey Lowell); she works on a wholly different level. He does have to try to be suave at one point with the wholly uninteresting Lupe (Talisa Soto), and it doesn't work. The casino sequence doesn't work (the horrible goombah hairstyle doesn't help). This is not the Bond who can drink a Martini or turn over cards well, so don't even try. Just get back to the thuggery. He's good at that.

Minor Observations: Let's begin from the beginning. The first thing a trained watcher notices about the film is that John Barry is not doing the music. Michael Kamen's score is the only one in the entire series to wreak significant havoc on Monty Norman's James Bond theme in the gun-barrel sequence at the very beginning. It's a refreshing change, but take it as a harbinger that this film does not really fit in with the others. In fact that's the high point of the score (a truly good replacement for Barry would have to wait until the advent of David Arnold). The rest of it mostly plays similar games with the Norman theme, including one joke where Sanchez fires a machine gun at Bond during the tank truck chase and the bullets play the theme as they ricochet. This would be a truly intrusive joke if I heard it, but for some reason, possibly because there is so much else going on, I never notice.

David Hedison, nearly the best Felix ever, reprises the role - making him the only actor to play Felix twice. Here Felix loses the limb(s) which he was supposed to have lost way back in Live and Let Die had we followed the book continuity. Note that Felix is apparently working for the DEA now, which gets around the CIA's domestic-charter issues. (In the books he had gone to work for Pinkerton's.)

The Felix and Della scenes are where we are most reminded of Bond continuity. Dalton's sour reaction to Della in the garter scene, when he is reminded of his marriage, is one of the few non-angry Dalton reactions which is well-played - certainly better played than his reaction to Della's death. Incidentally, I'm not the only commentator who believes that Della is a little too attracted to Bond ....

Although you can barely identify it, the "whip" Sanchez uses on Lupe in an early scene is a stingray tail. This calls for a bit of explanation. The character of Milton Krest is taken pretty much verbatim from the story "The Hildebrand Rarity" in the collection For Your Eyes Only (see comments under the film of the same name).

Krest, feeling the pressure »

The plot of the story is in no way preserved (which is why I have put "n/a" for a book date above), only the character of Krest and his yacht, and some traces of his sideline/front of collecting and selling marine animals. In the story, the Lupe-equivalent character is his mistress, not Sanchez', and he uses the stingray tail on her - a vicious weapon - among other abuses. (At the end of the story he is found dead; it is never settled which of the many people who had cause to hate him did it. The only thing clear is that it wasn't Bond.)

Some of the more inexcusable Bond conduct in this film is toward the women. I may find Lupe wholly uninteresting, but she nonetheless gets rougher treatment than she deserves, especially as someone who has also suffered at Sanchez' hands. Pam has a different problem; she gives as good as she gets and doesn't suffer physically at Bond's hands, but Bond is a complete jerk to her through most of the film. While Bond's conduct toward Q and Pam is understandable if you assume he doesn't want to involve them in his vendetta any more than necessary, it's still a lot more mean-spirited than it needs to be.

Some people really dislike the Pam character. Perhaps she is an acquired taste, but you have to love a woman who: tsks at Bond's pistol in the Barrelhead and shows him that she's carrying a shotgun; tastes Bond's Martini and finds it nasty; gives him the gun she has under her tearaway skirt, then casually pulls another from her purse; wears a bulletproof vest to a bar fight; and, let us never forget, seduces Wayne Newton.

By the by, some people also have a problem with the casting of Wayne Newton. I think he makes the perfect insincere, fraudulent televangelist, frankly, so I have no idea what the griping is about. Besides, he's only in the film for a few minutes.

The other great minor villain is Anthony Starke as Truman Lodge, the money wonk who is way out of his depth. Sanchez' "I guess it's time to start cutting overhead" at Lodge's expense is one of Sanchez' two best grim-humor lines. The other, of course, is "Launder it" - if you haven't seen the film, I can't explain it, it would ruin it. (It's true that these lines work better in, say, a Schwarzenegger film, which just underscores my point that viewing this as a Bond film is a mistake.)

The only villain who stinks is Dario, played laughably badly by a very young Benicio del Toro. Apparently he got better later in his career.

As noted above, this is Q's finest hour, with him not only travelling out to give Bond illicit equipment, but acting as a "damned good field operative." Desmond Llewellyn's appearance in the film reportedly drew cheers from the audience at the London press screening, not surprising given the very American tone of this film. Llewellyn apparently enjoyed himself tremendously. It is his longest role, in screen time, in a Bond film, and possibly in his career. My favorite bit is when he is introduced as Bond's "uncle" and Pam as Bond's "cousin," and Q, not missing a beat, says, "Ah, we must be related!" And kisses her cheek.

This is the second Bond film where no principal photography took place at Pinewood; the bulk of the lot photography was done at the Chuburusco studios in Mexico City. This was reportedly an enormous disappointment to Pinewood (The Living Daylights had occupied fully half of its capacity) but once again, as with Moonraker, the tax situation in England was considered untenable for production costs.

This film was called Licence Revoked until a fairly late stage in the process; posters and other promotional materials were printed with this title. Officially, the explanation is that the title was too hard to translate for international release, but there is a persistent story that the real problem is that a majority of American test audiences didn't know what the word "revoked" meant. (One of my books calls this a myth originating in British newspapers, but does note that American viewers associated the phrase mostly with the suspension of a driver's license.)

The title change caused another headache because Dr. No had been titled Licence To Kill in Italy. The Italian title eventually chosen for this film was Private Revenge, which isn't a bad summation, actually.

Bond confronts M at the home of Ernest Hemingway in Key West (you can see the Hemingway House plaque briefly). This is the source of his comment "A farewell to arms?" when he surrenders his gun. Incidentally, a couple of commentators are disturbed by the fact that apparently "there are too many people around" is the only reason M doesn't have his men gun Bond down. Were you expecting something else? M cannot afford compassion there; Bond is dangerous. And, frankly, to put compassion ahead of practicality goes against everything we know about M's character.

The credits show an anti-smoking warning, a late addition spurred by Eon's lawyers, who noted that the film depicted a genuine brand of cigarettes (the Lark package used as a detonator).

El Presidente Lopez is played by Pedro Armendariz Jr. Armendariz fils, quite properly, removed the "Jr" after his father's death, and thus if you see a cast listing for "Pedro Armendariz" after 1963, including this film, it's the son. You don't really get enough of a look at him here to see that he's definitely his father's son, but if you watch Once Upon a Time In Mexico, where he is also El Presidente, it will give you Kerim Bey flashbacks.

As noted at the top (and I am far from the only person to note this), the hardest thing to swallow about this film is that M would ever give Bond the job back. On the other hand, in the books he gives Bond the job back after Bond tries to assassinate him, so who knows? Perhaps, given the long hiatus which follows, it might be more pleasant to pretend that M does not give Bond his job back and that the next Bond is a different Bond entirely, a brand new continuity in which we get a new M, a new Moneypenny ... and a new director.

With this film John Glen beat Guy Hamilton's record for directing the most Bonds, and as far as I am concerned it was way past time for him to go. Also swept out in the interregnum and reinvention was long-time writer and script mastermind Richard Maibaum. Maibaum, arguably the man who did the most to shape the film portrayal of Bond, died in 1991.

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