Timothy Dalton

Licence to Kill (1989)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-09-272023-03-19 Movie Review

(Second Viewing Perhaps, On Cable TV, September 2019) I could have sworn that I had seen Licence to Kill once on TV in the early nineties, perhaps distractingly, but now that I have seen it, I’m not so sure — Unlike most of the other Bond movies that left deep impressions, this once felt almost brand new. Of course, it also felt far more generic than the others. The Timothy Dalton years were weird ones for the Bond franchise — The last of an era for many of the earliest collaborators of the franchise, but also a reset away from the silliness of the Moore movies and a harbinger of far darker interpretations of the character. Dalton was a more serious Bond, a more violent one as well, and Licence to Kill is often surprising in how it portrays him as a cold-blooded revenge instrument, going after a drug kingpin for maiming friend Felix Leiter and killing Leiter’s bride. Alas, for much of its duration Licence to Kill feels like a very ordinary 1980s American action revenge film with some familiar names sprinkled in — A Chuck Norris film featuring the Bond theme, Desmond Llewellyn hamming it up as Q and a decent budget for stunts. Per Bond standards, we’re stuck away from espionage and far too long in a murky narcotraficante story that would have been a subplot in other Bond films. (There’s a thirty-second intersection with Hong Kong policing, but that’s it for a film focused only on the Florida Keys and Mexico playing a renamed Panama.) The Bond Girls are not bad (Talisa Soto is beautiful but doesn’t have much to do — while Carey Lowell is plainer but has the plum action role.) but their role marks a noticeable change (for the better) from the usual Bond formula — They even both survive at the end! Heck, even Wayne Newton shows up playing a TV preacher caricature, not to mention an early role for Benicio del Toro as a menacing thug. This off-brand direction for the movie meant that it didn’t do particularly well with audiences or reviewers at the time — After Licence to Kill, the Bond series underwent its longest eclipse until 1995’s revitalized Goldeneye. Of course, in hindsight, Dalton’s run doesn’t seem as bad today, sandwiched between the debonair silliness of both Moore and Brosnan, and its more serious tone prefigures Craig’s tenure. Still, let’s not praise Licence to Kill as an overlooked gem: It’s surprisingly dull for much of its duration, only showing signs of life in action sequences and a particularly intricate action climax featuring a lot of moving parts and classically unbelievable Bond stunts. (The trailer-tractor side-driving is great; the wheelie not so much.) It’s late in its third act that Licence to Kill finally regains the panache of the Bond movie — Too late to be completely satisfying, but at least enough to avoid being a complete let-down. No wonder the series took a six-year break after that, coming back with a new headliner.

Movie Review

The Living Daylights (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-11-222019-11-18 Movie Review

(Second or third Viewing, On Blu Ray, November 2018) By the time Timothy Dalton took over the James Bond role from Roger Moore in The Living Daylights, the ground had shifted a bit underneath the Bond franchise. Suddenly, the womanizing wasn’t as appealing, and dozens of other movies were aiming for the same thrills as the Bond series. As a result, The Living Daylights attempts a light retooling of the character. There’s only one woman for Bond this time around and the film goes back to its spying roots in delivering an authentic late-period Cold-War thriller that has a ring of authenticity to it. Dalton has his best movie here—still relatively charming compared to his much-darker follow-up License to Kill, but hard-edged enough to ensure that we wouldn’t mistake it for another Moore entry. I remembered only a few things from a previous viewing sometime in the early 1990s, but one of them is the incredibly cool Walther WA 2000 sniper rifle used early in the film. The other is Maryam d’Abo as one of the best Bond Girls up to that point, and a relative rarity in the pantheon as a Bond Girl portrayed as a complex skilled character (a cellist) but not an enemy agent equally able to match Bond’s fighting skills. The film’s opening half is a bit better than its concluding act, which suffers from some contemporary weirdness in heading to Afghanistan and fighting alongside the anti-Soviet pre-Taliban Mujahideen. (To be fair, Rambo III ended up in the same place for the same reasons at about the same time.) Still, The Living Daylights remains a step up for the series, and it’s still remarkably good watching even today as we’ve grown accustomed to a much dourer Bond during the Craig years. Alas, Dalton would squander much of his accumulated goodwill in the follow-up film…

Movie Review

Flash Gordon (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-07-182019-03-24 Movie Review

(On TV, July 2018) Oh wow. I’m not sure you can actually describe Flash Gordon without sounding certifiably insane, so wholeheartedly does it commit to its campy style. 1980 was like a parallel universe when seen through the campy mind of director Mike Hodges, and I’m not sure where to start in order to give you a taste of the film’s built-in ludicrousness. Maybe Queen’s soundtrack with its eponymous FLASH! (Ah-ah-Aaaah) ? Maybe the prologue where a bored supervillain decides to destroy the Earth out of spite? Maybe the hero, a football star thrown in galactic conflicts? Maybe the unrepentant use of musty clichés such as the scientist and his daughter? Maybe the gaudy visual design of the film? Maybe Max von Sydow and BRIAN BLESSED hamming it up, along with such notables as Timothy Dalton and Topol in other roles? Maybe choice quotes along the lines of “Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!” I don’t know. Flash Gordon has a messy production history, and the fairest assessment you can make of it was that Dino de Laurentis thought it was a good idea to resurrect a 1930s comic strip, except that the people tasked with writing and executing the project found the thing so ridiculous that they left the throttle firmly struck in the “parody” setting and the result got away from them. Or they all played along. No matter how you see it, Flash Gordon is a terrible big brash loud movie that feels as if it’s an hours-long hallucination. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

Movie Review

The Rocketeer (1991)

ByChristian Sauvé 2017-11-272018-02-01 Movie Review

(On DVD, November 2017) For proof that “old-fashioned” in no insult, look no further than The Rocketeer, a glorious throwback to the adventure serials of the 1930s and a highly enjoyable comic-book movie from a time well before the current glut of comic-book movies. If this film has a secret weapon, it’s charm. The kind of quasi-goofy, rather comfortable charm that you get with a morally upstanding square-jawed hero (Billy Campbell), a curly brunette heroine (Jennifer Connelly), a scenery-chomping villain (Timothy Dalton), a fun piece of technology (a rocket backpack!) and a voluntarily retro setting that pays affectionate homage to the best features of the era. Here we are at the heroic age of aviation, with Gee-Bees barnstormers, Hollywood glamour, Nazis lurking at the edges of the screen and Howard Hughes coming up with fantastic inventions. It’s certainly not challenging, but it’s a lot of fun. Director Joe Johnston has proven time and again his ability to deliver straightforward adventures, but The Rocketeer still stands as one of the highlights of his career. The special effects aren’t particularly good, but who cares when the script, and the film, have this scene-to-scene watchability that will keep viewers glued to the screen. A similar movie would probably do better today (The Rocketeer is definitely a spiritual ancestor to Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger), and as it turns out there are steady rumblings about a sequel any time soon. I’m looking forward to that.