- Licence to Kill is the first James Bond film to break from the standard script, in the sense that it sees Bond (Timothy Dalton) rebel against his superiors at MI6 to pursue a personal vendetta against a Latin American drug lord named Sanchez (Robert Davi). But because the sixteenth film in a series can only tolerate so much non-conformity, Bond still operates by the standard spy playbook, enlisting the help of the gadgeteer Q (Desmond Llewelyn), a CIA informant Bouvier (Carey Lowell), a redoubtable boat captain (Frank McRae), and even Sanchez' own girlfriend (Talisa Soto). Although the head of MI6 (Robert Brown) has formally revoked Bond's famous "licence to kill," he still carries his Walther PPK and fires it without hesitation.
- Bond's vendetta stems from a brutal attack on the newly married Felix and Della Leiter (David Hedison and Priscilla Barnes), who are practically dripping with foreshadowing when the subject of dead wives comes up at their wedding reception. With the help of a shady smuggler (Anthony Zerbe), a grinning henchman (Benicio del Toro), a complicit DEA agent (Everett McGill), and some sharks, Sanchez ruins their honeymoon and sets Bond on the path to revenge. Whereas The Living Daylights represented a shift toward realism for the franchise, this film features Wayne Newton as a crooked televangelist, interrupts a suspenseful sniper scene with a ninja attack, and executes the second-most comical character death by explosive decompression in the Bond series. We'll call that one step forward and two steps back.
- While Licence to Kill is ultimately a very average Bond outing, Timothy Dalton does seem slightly more comfortable with the role the second time around, making it regrettable that he never got a third chance. Davi, Zerbe, and del Toro are all watchable enough actors to keep the momentum going through the slow parts, even if Lowell and Soto aren't particularly effective as the thinly-sketched female leads. The big finale features more exploding vehicles than I've ever seen onscreen, and I can't decide whether or not that's a good thing. In any case, the Bond franchise took a six-year hiatus after this one and recast everyone except Desmond Llewelyn before returning with GoldenEye.
