Licence to Kill (1989)

For today's James Bond marathon, we're already at the end of the short-lived Timothy Dalton era, reviewing his final film, Licence to Kill (1989).

SYNOPSIS:
On the way to Felix Leiter's (David Hedison) wedding, the DEA intercept him and his best man, James Bond (Timothy Dalton) to inform them that the notorious drug lord, Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) is out of hiding.  Taking a quick detour, Bond and Leiter capture him alive, then make it to Leiter's wedding just in time.  But Sanchez escapes capture that night and goes after Leiter and his new bride, maiming them on their wedding night.  When Bond's attempt to chase down Sanchez is denied by M (Robert Brown), he resigns from the service and goes rogue, chasing Sanchez south of the border.  And so begins a revenge-fueled vendetta to avenge Felix Leiter and his wife, no matter the cost...

REVIEW:
This is the first time we've seen Bond go rogue.  It's a very dark tale of hatred and revenge, which fits nicely with the menacing look of Timothy Dalton.  He refuses to accept his next assignment from M, and so when M revokes his license to kill, Bond makes a run for it, being shot at by his very own people.  By the way, the original title of this film was "License Revoked."

M demanding Bond's gun after revoking his license to kill

Along the way, Bond finds himself so driven by his one goal of ending Sanchez that he inadvertently stumbles across other nation's secret agencies trying to infiltrate Sanchez's organization.  Bond's refusal to give up on Sanchez jeopardizes everyone else's mission and gets agents killed.  MI6 even sends an agent to collect Bond and drag him back to England, unsuccessfully.  Moneypenny (Caroline Bliss) is so distraught by Bond resigning, she authorizes a search behind M's back to help track down Bond's location.  And so, M decides that the only way to get Bond back is to help him complete his mission.  He enlists Q (Desmond Llewelyn) to go find Bond and provide him with any necessary tools he may need.

Bond being interrogated by fellow agents

Q checks in to Bond's hotel room, posing as his uncle, and provides Bond with a bag loaded with gadgets.  He provides Dentonite Toothpaste (plastic explosive in a tube) and a pack of cigarettes as a remote trigger.  He also has a camera that can be reassembled into a sniper gun, with an optical palm reader that only fires when it detects Bond's hand gripping it.  We also see a Polaroid camera that shoots a deadly laser from the flash and takes x-ray photos, plus an alarm clock that explodes if you use the alarm.  Neither were used in the film, though.

Q briefing Bond on his latest gadgets

Failing to take out the well-protected Sanchez from a distance, Bond instead decides to get close to him by posing as a potential ally.  He tells a partial truth, letting Sanchez know that he's a former agent of the British government.  After being captured by other foreign agents and saved by Sanchez, Sanchez starts to believe that Bond is truly an ally, and lets him in to his inner circle, where Bond can start tearing down the walls of trust among his people and destroying his drug business.

Sanchez and Bond bonding over tea

Earlier in the film, there was a scene where Felix Leiter's new wife tried to toss Bond her garter, saying it'll mean he's next for marriage.  Rejecting her offer, he turns to leave.  When she asked Felix if she said something wrong, Felix points out that Bond was married once a long time ago.  This ties Timothy Dalton's Bond to both George Lazenby and Roger Moore's Bond; the former having been married and losing his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and the latter visiting her grave in For Your Eyes Only (1981).  When George Lazenby's Bond attempts to resign from MI6 and starts cleaning out his desk, we see items from past missions that Sean Connery's Bond went on, further tying his past to that actor's films.

Felix Leiter, explaining to his new wife why Bond rejects marriage

This rejects the theory out there that "James Bond, 007" is just a code name that multiple people have used over the years.  For a long time, some fans of the series believed that each new actor was just a new person playing the persona of Bond, in order to keep a spy legacy going; a plot point that was actually brought up in the spin-off satire film, Casino Royale (1967).  But these four actors have a shared history in their Bond stories, making it impossible for them to be different agents sharing a code name.  Pierce Brosnan's Bond was a soft reboot of the franchise, which I believe doesn't have any solid ties to the previous films (we'll find out when I re-watch his films over the next week), and then Daniel Craig's Bond was a complete reboot of the franchise.  But we'll discuss all that later when we get there.

Timothy Dalton was actually signed on for three films, with his next film reportedly being called "Property of a Lady."  This is the name of a short story in Ian Fleming's 14th and final novel, "Octopussy and The Living Daylights."  Unfortunately, production was delayed so long, Timothy Dalton eventually announced his resignation from the role and moved on to other things.  It would be six years before another Bond film would be made.  The story (and title) of License to Kill (1989) is almost completely original, having practically no connection to any of Ian Fleming's work.  In Fleming's second novel, "Live and Let Die," Felix Leiter is maimed by sharks, losing an arm and a leg.  This small plot point was used as the driving factor for Bond's revenge in this film, but that's the only connection this film has to a Bond novel.

The self-titled song for this film is pretty good.  Despite being a little soft like most of the other '80s Bond songs, it has a pretty impacting theme that I like.  It was performed by Gladys Knight, the legendary "Empress of Soul."  Maybe that's why I enjoy it so much.  You can listen to it here:

RECOMMENDATION:
If you want to see Bond go on a personal vendetta to exact revenge, even going rogue from MI6 in order to complete his mission, this is the film to see.  This film is likely what inspired the video game "GoldenEye: Rogue Agent," where you play as an agent who turns on MI6 to join the villains.  This is also the first true taste of a dark, gritty Bond, before Daniel Craig reinvents the character in his gritty modern Bond films.  I enjoyed this darker film, and I'd highly recommend it!