I wish I knew the right way to start off this entry, but I've never been that much of a James Bond kind of guy. Not to say that I haven’t enjoyed some 007 movies in my time: Skyfall, Casino Royale, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, all enjoyable films, all what I would say are good films...but I don’t connect with them as strongly as I do with other movies. James Bond is supposed to be the male fantasy, super suave, travels all over the world, has sex with hot chicks, drives cool cars, etc. I enjoy that on the basic level that was undoubtedly intended for, but when it happens every single movie, doesn't that get old after a while? Even the supposedly more realistic film of the Craig Bond films fall into this repetitive behavior, changing the ancillary characters around a bit but not really changing anything truly meaningful. Maybe that’s what has helped James Bond remain a franchise for so long, the allure of status quo with a new coat of paint every few years, like a multimillion dollar production of Gilligan’s Island where all the spy gadgets are made of coconuts. Is it too much to ask that a James Bond movie have an attractive woman who a. is not ‘the chick minion’ and b. doesn't immediately have sex with some British dude she’s known for like 2 days?
Anyway, The Living Daylights begins with Bond being ordered to protect one General Koskov, a potential defector from the Soviet Union from an assassination attempt. Bond does so (by disarming a suspiciously over attractive sniper), but Koskov is recaptured several days later seemingly by KGB agents. All the evidence seems to point to the actions of one General Pushkin (a perfectly reasonable Soviet beforehand) who has formed a kill list of American and British secret agents in order to escalate tensions to the point of nuclear war. 007 is ordered to execute Pushkin while he’s at a conference in Tangier, but James has his doubts; about Pushkin, about Koskov, and especially about that attractive sniper, who didn't even know how to use a rifle. It’s just the kind of combination of events James Bond needs in order to have a rip-roaring adventure, and adventure he does.
The is the first James Bond film to star Timothy Dalton in the tux, taking over the role after Roger Moore. You don’t often hear much talk about Dalton Bond, perhaps because he was in only two films, but I think he slips into the role just fine. He’s perhaps a muted version of Connery’s Bond, if you can understand my meaning, or perhaps a proto-version of the Craig Bond; a suave gentleman when need be, but analytical as well. Dalton’s Bond feels like an assassin as well as a secret agent, like he spends his days straight up killing dudes rather than saving the world from evil plots, which makes him rather more a real secret agent than any other Bond that had been done previously. Unless you count Roald Dahl, who was apparently a huge poon hound when he was in the secret service.
Maryam d’Abo plays the Bond girl this time around, a Czech cellist by the name of Kara Milovy. She looks lovely, aside from the fact it almost looked like she had a unibrow, so I suppose she earned her paycheck this time around. I wasn't really taken with her character (the ‘girl is in love with a guy who’s actually a villain’ angle has been done before) up until the end, when she began to do things by herself rather than wait for Bond to do things for her. Other than that though, she wasn't all that remarkable. A solid C at best.
The Living Daylights also suffers from a lack of a strong antagonist. Goldfinger, Dr. No, Blofeld, fantastical near super villains are the cornerstone of the James Bond franchise (even if you count the down to earth From Russia With Love as the greatest James Bond film, you have to admit it’s in the minority in terms of content). TLD’s main villain, such as it is, is a black market arms dealer by the name of Whitaker, played by occasional MST3K subject Joe Don Baker. Whitaker has an interesting enough gimmick, a pretend soldier completely obsessed with warfare to the point he keeps wax warlords in his house, but he’s barely in the movie at all, and most of the antagonist screen time is given to his subordinates. It’s like if in Goldfinger if James Bond fought Oddjob the whole film, and Goldfinger only showed up a couple of times to make gold-based puns before he died. Not only that, but the minions who do most of the antagonizing aren't that interesting either, just some assassin and a Russian general, and neither of them have a razor sharp throwing hat. I know that asking for camp might be a bit antithetical in these modern times, but if the best serious villains you can make are ones that don’t feel threatening then it doesn't matter how much more realistic they are, because they’re interesting to watch. I will give them points for the exploding milk though.
So who does the main theme in this entry into the James Bond franchise, which has featured songs by such figures as Paul McCartney, Carly Simon and Sheena Easton? a-Ha. Yes, the Norwegian new wave band a-ha does the main theme for The Living Daylights, the appropriately titled “The Living Daylights”. I’m a fan of the new wave sound, and I think a-Ha puts in a good performance, but it doesn't really feel like a Bond theme. There’s no sense of grandeur, none of the larger than life feeling that truly brings the mind the character of James Bond, it just feels like a song playing at the beginning of a movie. Hell, Live and Let Die is supposed to be a particularly shitty movie from what I've read, but that theme! That’s a theme so good it gets played on the radio with no context at all and it still rocks the house every time.
If your local radio station doesn't play “Live and Let Die”, request it as soon as possible. Your listening area will be a better place because of it.
The Living Daylights seems trapped within its era, stuck between the tired Moore Bond movies and the soon to be awful Brosnan Bond movies. This movie feels like it might have been trying to emulate FRWL, and Dalton could have pulled it off, but then he ends up sledding down a hill in a cello case and watching scientists trying out ‘the ghetto blaster’. The uneven feeling of mood whiplash and lack of remarkable villain make this an unfortunately average movie, but it’s still got a lot of that Bond feel to it, and those interested in seeing an oft-forgotten James Bond (not as much as Lazenby, but still not well known) might like to check out the differences. Better luck next time, 007.
James Bond will return in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But that might be a while.
Result: Tentatively Recommended
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