Licence to Kill Brought Gritty Realism to James Bond
After 60 years, 25 films, and 6 leading men, the James Bond franchise has been one of consistent reinvention from one era to the next. From Sean Connery's suave and debonair debut of the character in the 1960s to Daniel Craig's more coldhearted portrayal of the iconic spy in the 21st century, the long-running film series has given viewers a variety of tones and stylistic aesthetics. Roger Moore's performances took the character into a lighter and more comedic direction that occasionally bordered on self-parody, giving viewers seven films that were a breezy and welcome breath of fresh air. When Pierce Brosnan took up the mantle, his approach to Bond found a happy medium between the playfulness of Moore and the confident stoicism of Connery, bringing to the franchise a healthy balance of reverence and fun. Part of what has made the film series so unique and endearing over the decades is its ability to allow for different performative interpretations by a handful of actors, each of whom put a personal stamp on Bond and left an indelible impression on audiences in his own way.
One of the more underappreciated portrayals of James Bond was that of Timothy Dalton. First appearing in 1987's The Living Daylights and ending his run just two years later, the British actor's brief stint as the secret agent brought a cold, hard-edged callousness to the franchise that hadn't been seen before. Dalton ditched the campy humor of his predecessor in favor of returning the character to Ian Fleming's darker, more brooding literary roots. His portrayal found a particularly unique blend of tone and material in his second outing, LIcence to Kill, which still remains a singular entry in the film series. Ahead of its time in presenting a vision of Bond highlighted by an increased level of violence and a stripped-down simplicity regarding character and narrative, the 1989 film imbued the series with gritty realism, making it an outlier at the time but also an example of the path the franchise would take in later years.
A Vengeful Rogue Agent
Licence to Kill opens with James Bond and his friend and confidant, DEA agent Felix Leiter, capturing notorious drug kingpin Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi). After escaping from custody, Sanchez murders Leiter's wife and maims the agent with the assistance of a hungry shark, subsequently fleeing and continuing work on his criminal enterprise. Hellbent on avenging the atrocities committed against one of his closest allies, Bond finds himself cutting through the red tape of bureaucracy, ultimately defying the orders of his superiors and going rogue on a self-appointed mission after having his titular authority revoked.
The film represented a significant departure from the series' mainstream formula in several ways. Bond's decision to go rogue with a personal vendetta marked a new kind of mission for the secret agent, who in previous films typically had to work within the confines of MI6 and on behalf of his rigid boss, M. As a loose canon operating outside the conventional wisdom and parameters of his trade, he's suddenly granted a newfound and uninhibited sense of freedom in tracking his enemy, beholden to no one and playing by his own rules. This unique situation allows for an emotionally-driven exploration of the character that had previously been largely untouched. His pursuit of Sanchez is personal, not business, and this dynamic gives Dalton an opportunity to flex some performative muscle in depicting Bond not as a professional, but as a man shirking traditional ethics and standards in seeking justice for his friend at any cost.
A Largely Humorless Story With a Ruthless Villain
In 1989, audiences were only one film removed from Roger Moore's era as James Bond. No doubt a talented actor whose portrayal of Bond brought viewers some of the most memorable and admittedly entertaining films in the series, Moore strayed significantly from the initial sentiment established by the preceding films of Sean Connery. While Connery's films weren't completely devoid of humor and levity, they paled in comparison to the sheer amount of tongue-in-cheek gags and pun-oriented zingers that dominated Moore's films. Once he departed the role and Timothy Dalton took over, Bond films saw a steep decline in comic relief and opted for a more reality-oriented approach to storytelling, peppered with darker undertones that underscored the dramatic and dangerous nature of events faced by the characters.
What also separates the film from its predecessors is the nature of its villain. Franz Sanchez has no plans for global domination or deploying some kind of high-tech, futuristic technology that threatens to spell doom for millions of people. While he is as ruthless and unforgiving as they come, sending multiple people to their deaths in various ways and inflicting torturous treatment on one of the film's leading ladies, Lupe (Talisa Soto), his motivations revolve around the very real and treacherous world of drug smuggling. He has his archetypal henchman, including a young Benicio del Toro as the sadistic Dario, but is not afraid to get his hands dirty in dispatching his enemies and makes no grand speeches to Bond about the nature of what he's doing or why he's doing it. Instead, he embodies a simple but intimidating characterization of evil that exists as a force of human nature, caring only about getting his product to prospective buyers around the world and cashing in on boatloads of money regardless of who or what stands in his way.
Stretching the PG-13 Rating
What most significantly sets this Bond film apart from all others, before and perhaps even since, is the level of violence it employs. The first in the series to receive a PG-13 rating, Licence to Kill ups the ante in terms of brutality and the outright mean-spirited nature of some of its characters. Consequently, this forces Bond to increase his own ruthless behavior in pursuing justice for his friend and thwarting Sanchez's criminal enterprise. Among Bond, Sanchez, and some particularly unhinged henchmen, the film depicts a number of violent moments that still raise eyebrows and drop the jaws of casual viewers to this day.
In the pre-title sequence, Sanchez finds Lupe in bed with a random man and, through the implication of a single line of dialogue, his goons kill and remove the man's heart (albeit offscreen) as Sanchez beats her with a whip. Regardless of whether it's a distasteful and overly violent introduction for the villain, it immediately lets audiences know just what kind of man Bond will be facing off against and establishes a level of menace that remains throughout the film's runtime. Another act of savagery is Sanchez's maiming of Bond's ally, Felix Leiter, which kicks off the agent's mission in the first place. After being lowered waist-deep into water, the helpless Leiter has his legs gnawed on by a shark. While the character survives and is ultimately avenged, the sequence is nonetheless one of the more cringe-inducing moments in the franchise's history.
Perhaps even more shocking are the deaths of henchmen Milton Krest, Dario, and Heller. The former is framed by Bond as intending to steal millions from Sanchez, finding himself being thrown into a decompression chamber and the end result is, for lack of a better term, explosive. Towards the film's climactic action sequence, Benicio Del Toro's Dario has a bloody run-in with an industrial grinder, and Heller, attempting to double-cross Sanchez, eventually finds himself on the wrong end of a forklift (leading to one of Dalton's few puns as Bond). In the film's thrilling finale, which sees some amazing practical effects and stunt work as semi trucks barrel down mountainous desert roads, the drug kingpin gets his well-deserved comeuppance when Bond, in a hint of irony, offs his nemesis in a fiery blaze using a lighter that Leiter (pun intended?) gifted him early in the film. While gruesome demises have been a relatively common hallmark of James Bond films, Licence to Kill certainly introduced viewers to a heightened level of violence previously unseen in the series, and, in hindsight, it's a bit surprising to realize that the film was granted a PG-13 rating by the MPAA.
A Glimpse of Things to Come
Released on July 14, 1989, to mixed reviews and the lowest box office take of any Bond film, the latter of which could be attributed to a summer release slate heavily saturated with blockbuster fare, Licence to Kill was followed by a then-record six-year break in the franchise. At the time, some of the more negative reception focused on the film's violent content and the self-serious approach that Dalton brought to the character, but the passage of time has been kind to the installment's shift in tonal dynamics and reinterpretation of its fearless hero. While Pierce Brosnan's subsequent tenure as Bond brought the franchise back to a level of high popularity and mainstream appeal that had been waning with Dalton's two films, and even some of Roger Moore's, it wouldn't be until 2006's Casino Royale that viewers would catch a glimpse of the character that was reminiscent of Dalton's portrayal. Cold, brooding, and possessing a similarly steely-eyed gaze, Daniel Craig's Bond was a ruthless return to form. The reboot tossed out many of the tropes that increasingly permeated Brosnan's films, which had culminated with 2002's Die Another Day overly relying on silly gadgetry, some infamously horrid visual effects, and a villainous scheme that waded into territory worthy of mockery.
Much like Licence to Kill,Casino Royale took the series back to the drawing board, stripping the character and his exploits down to a more gritty and straightforward depiction of a world recognizable to audiences. In the vein of Franz Sanchez, the villainous Le Chiffre in Craig's debut was a more pragmatic match for the spy and, though not particularly interested in global mayhem, was mainly preoccupied with monetary gain through international arms dealing. Craig, like Dalton, kept the humor sparse and instead focused on a darker and more hard-edged take on the beloved character. Like all the leading men before him, Craig's run as James Bond had its ups and downs, but was by and large emblematic of an approach and tone that hadn't been put to film since Dalton's turn in his second outing. Though some audiences may not have been ready for the kind of Bond adventure they got when Licence to Kill hit theaters, it's undeniably a film that provided a glimpse into where the franchise would go years later.
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