Licence to Kill (1989)
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Licence to Kill Movie Review
Licence to Kill is a 1989 spy film directed by John Glen and starring Timothy Dalton. It is the second and last film to star Dalton and still a weak one.
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“I hope you don’t snore, Q“
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The plot continues to be almost non-existent, but another problem arises here in that the film has too much plot but none of it is deep, complex or particularly interesting. Most of it is just not particularly engaging and the film is overblown and rarely as entertaining as it should have been.
But a bigger problem remains in that the film is once again too dark. It is even darker than ‘The Living Daylights’ and although it is definitely a bit better film than that one, it still has a major tonal problem. It lacks in terms of entertainment and humor thoroughly as it is rarely truly entertaining and almost never funny.
I actually did like some of the darker elements in this film. They were definitely interesting and quite memorable such as most of the animal sequences. But still the movie desperately needed humor and charm to counteract its serious nature.
Timothy Dalton has only been James Bond for two movies and he definitely wasn’t great. Here he is once again problematic as the character lost his edge, is not funny whatsoever, he is too serious and he is not a womanizer. Well, actually the film does set up a triangle, but the sexual scenes are never shown whatsoever and in that sense the romantic elements in the previous movie are better.
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Licence to Kill doesn’t have all that interesting locations and thus it is never as intriguing or as exotic as I’d come to expect from this franchise. The action and crime elements I did like quite a bit as they were mostly very well executed and although some of those scenes were unrealistic, the absence of silliness worked in their favor. I liked the girls but they were underutilized and the score is once again very strong. The film is overlong and boring, but it has its interesting moments with cool gadgets and action scenes.
Licence to Kill has its strong action sequences and crime elements and the absence of silliness worked in its favor, but this Timothy Dalton flick is again overly serious as Bond here is not particularly charismatic and never funny at all. They attempted a hard reboot on the franchise with these two Dalton flicks and that is commendable, but it sadly didn’t quite work.
