- The Living Daylights is a Bond film best viewed as a reaction against the Roger Moore era. Gone are the pervasive coarseness, the silly quips, and the laser fights on the moon. With Timothy Dalton, we get the most straight-laced version of Bond to appear onscreen in what is probably the character's most realistic outing, if a concept like realism can be applied to this series. Sure, it's not the most memorable version of Bond nor is it his most fun adventure, but at least it avoids embarrassment in a way that Live and Let Die and Moonraker never managed to do.
- The plot centers around the defection of a Soviet general named Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé), whom Bond smuggles out of Czechoslovakia through a natural gas pipeline. Once in British custody, the loquacious general reveals that his former superior, KGB General Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies), has issued a deadly injunction against foreign spies, which explains why an earlier training sequence on the Rock of Gibralter turned tragic. After Koskov is violently kidnapped by a walkman-wielding henchman (Andreas Wisniewski), Bond tracks down the woman who had earlier tried to assassinate Koskov, a talented cellest named Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo). By assassin standards, Milovy is surprisingly innocent, and soon she and Bond are hopping around the globe trying to find Koskov before it's too late.
- Although modern American audiences may cringe when James Bond assists a set of sympathetic Afghan rebels (led by Art Malik), The Living Daylights reserves most of its political criticism for dumb American war profiteers, personified by a Civil War-reenacting, machine gun-toting Joe Don Baker in the role he was born to play. Whereas Dalton's seriousness occasionally makes him seem wooden and Krabbé's Russian accent is laughably bad, both d'Abo and Rhys-Davies rise to the occasion, with d'Abo in particular delivering one of the most respectable Bond girl performances in the series. Director John Glen never gets in the way of the material, and the scenery at the Rock of Gibralter and in the Moroccan desert (standing in for Afghanistan) is quite impressive. If nothing else, The Living Daylights served as a necessary course correction for a series that had strayed a little too far adrift.
- This was unfortunately the last Bond film to be scored by John Barry. Also unfortunate is the theme song by A-ha.
- Apparently Prince Charles fired the "ghetto-blaster" rocket, which is just odd.
