Licence to Kill (1989) - film review

On his wedding day, CIA agent Felix Leiter assists British agent James Bond in capturing the notorious drugs baron Franz Sanchez.  The latter’s captivity is short-lived, however.  After a spectacular escape from justice, Sanchez takes a swift vengeance by maiming Leiter with a shark and murdering his new bride.  Bond is so incensed by these developments that he resolves to go after Sanchez to exact a merciless revenge.  When his boss M orders him to return to Istanbul to resume his official assignment, Bond refuses and offers his resignation.  M revokes his licence to kill but cannot prevent his best agent from going after Sanchez.  This time, Bond is on his own, or so he thinks...

The most adult of the Bond movies, Licence to Kill dispenses with the camp excesses and formulaic gimmicks of the past and delivers a solid, edge-of-the-seat action thriller that takes the series into new ground, and not before time.  The film is such a departure from what went before that it hardly feels like a Bond movie at all, which is probably why it tends to be rated poorly by the fans and is often cited as one of the weaker entries in the series.  But, judged on its own merits, Licence to Kill is easily one of the slickest and most compelling of the later Bond films, superbly directed by John Glen (his best contribution to the series) and arguably the nearest the series ever got to Ian Fleming’s original creation up to this point - although, ironically, it was also the first Bond film not to be named after one of Fleming’s novels.

In the second and last of his outings as 007, Timothy Dalton looks more comfortable in the role than all of his predecessors and, perhaps for the first time in the entire series, we have a James Bond who actually looks like a real human being rather than a slightly camp comic-book action hero.  Dalton’s Bond is tougher, more aggressive and more vulnerable than what we have seen before, a more humane portrayal, but one edged with a vicious streak of sadism.  Dalton’s intense, fairly humourless performance is certainly in tune with the darker mood of the film, which is far grittier and more prone to explicit violence than earlier Bond films.   Not only is Timothy Dalton the best actor to have played Bond to date, he is also the only actor to have taken the part seriously.  Such a pity that he couldn’t be persuaded to stick with the role for a few more films.

Licence to Kill also offers some of the most spectacular action sequences in the series, a formidable adversary played by Robert Davi (a Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike, but one who can act) and one of the feistiest Bond girls of them all, in the guise of Carey Lowell.  Yet despite all this, and despite some very favourable reviews, the film was ill-received by the cinema-going public, and performed particularly badly in the United States.  This was partly down to the fact that the film had been issued with a PG-13 certification (on account of its violence and drugs references) but mainly because it was widely considered too great a departure from the previous Bond films.  It would be another six years before 007 returned to the big screen, and when he did so it would be with a new face...

© Steve Chandler 2011

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?