1989 - Licence To Kill
Alternate Title - No License To Kill
PG13 - 133 minutes
Director - John Glen
Stars - Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell, Benicio Del Toro
“A vengeful British spy goes rogue and sets off to unleash vengeance upon an drug lord whom tortured his best friend a CIA agent and left him for dead and murdered his bride after he helped capture him.” That’s the IMDb plotline for this movie. I’m assuming that isn’t from the studio because it’s clearly written by someone who has English as a second language.
Watch the opening scene of this movie. Not for the plot but for the sequence where Bond is on a helicopter, lowers himself down to a plane, ties a wire around the tail of the plane and the helicopter makes the plane go vertical. It’s exactly what happens in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight Rises.
It seems that Bond has time to make a ton of friends because after that scene above, Bond is at a wedding and having a fucking ball. I’ve never see him have so much fun not flirting up a storm or getting his STD-riddled dick wet. I really think the married couple are desperately trying to get Bond to join them for a wedding night three-way. This sets off the plot because the man Bond captured at the beginning (Sanchez) is freed by a corrupt cop, Killifer. Once he escapes he captures the groom and tortures the shit out of him. The first paragraph of this explains the rest. What that paragraph doesn’t explain is that Sanchez uses a shark to bite the guy’s fucking leg off. Bond then goes back to his friend’s office which pissed me off. Not the fact that he went back but because Felix has a ton of sports banners on the walls. What pissed me off is that they are for seemingly every random team you can think of in both baseball and football. Who the hell is a fan of just a ton of random teams? Most people seem to pick a team or two or just follow a city or two. This man has banners from Dallas, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and just wherever.
I can’t help but notice what Dalton dresses like Mr. Rogers in his Bond movies. That is, of course when he’s not in a tuxedo. While wearing a pair of old-man pants and a nice spring sweater, Bond is told by M that his license to kill is revoked. Bond kicks a dude in the chest and flips over the railing of a house into a nice barrel roll on the dirt to escape in his old-man outfit. It’s like senior citizen parkour. An idea I’m amazed isn’t already a reality show. I’m sure Fox has it in the works as I write this.
There’s something non-threatening about a villain (Milton Crest) in salmon colored pants. Not to mention that the secondary villain is actually named Milton. I’m not sure which one is a worst offense when you’re trying to be a bad-ass. This movie has the first underwater Bond scenes that I actually was interested in. That is until he harpoons a plane and then water-skis behind it. Bond isn’t much for subtlety. Once aboard the plane, Bond throws millions of dollars out of the plane. Adding this to the two million dollars he wasted when he killed Killifer, he’s down like 10 million or so. Seems like the money would at least help him on his quest for revenge. Maybe hire some goons or something.
I almost forgot this was made in the 80’s until a bar scene smashed the reminder over my head like a neon-spandex stool. Benicio Del Toro is also a henchmen in this scene, dressed in the exact same outfit he later wears in The Usual Suspects. Of course, since this is the 80’s, it devolves into a bar brawl. EVERYONE MUST FIGHT! For some reason, in the 80’s people thought that a small skirmish in a bar means everyone not involved in the fight must suddenly start punching old ladies and children if they are nearby. Bond and Pam Bouvier escape on a boat and start making out when Bond hits the horn of the boat to end it because I’m serious…his dick doesn’t work. It’s like Dalton thought it would be a fun character quirk when he took over as Bond. “Wouldn’t it be fun if Bond just couldn’t get it up anymore?” Probably a result of all the STD’s he’s accrued over the years. Oh, and it turns out that Bond kept a ton of the money and later is just throwing it at people like a child would if they came upon a large amount of money. He hands every character he meets bills like he’s in the goddamn mafia.
Wayne fucking Newton is in this movie. It’s amazing to see him in a movie not playing a plastic surgery version of himself. As of this movie he’s yet to look like a melting wax figure. His role in the movie is to pretend to be running a fundraising show but instead he’s secretly giving the drug dealers information without making it obvious to the law. It’s a cleverly done scene.
While referencing the fact that he’s without a job, Bond basically says one thing to me; the title of this movie is nonsense. Actually, he doesn’t have a license to kill. He’s previously had it revoked. That’s like if the movie, Speed was titled Cruise Control. Oh wait, the sequel totally was. Putting this movie in the same grouping as Speed 2, which says a fucking lot.
Not only does Dalton Bond not have sex when he clearly can but he gets denied left and right in his two movies. I’ve never seen the previous Bond men get denied. Shit, when Connery got denied by Pussy Galore, an obvious lesbian, he just rapes her until she likes it. This Bond apparently just gets off on the action instead of the sweet, sweet double-crossing vagina that comes his way. Although there is a possibility that Sanchez totally date-raped Bond. After being knocked unconscious, Bond wakes up in Sanchez’s bed and they give each other awkward stares while they chat.
Wow, Bond sets up Milton Krest so that Sanchez thinks he stole his money and hired someone to kill him. By putting the money that Bond stole on Krest’s boat, Sanchez finds it and kills Krest. He kills him by pushing Krest into a submarine capsule and turning up the pressure as if he were at the bottom of the sea. A henchman hands him an axe and Sanchez hit’s the air pressure tube which causes Krest’s head to literally explode.
I think, think, that Bond slept with Sanchez’s girl. They start making out before it cuts to the next scene but she states that he stayed with her the previous night. She doesn’t seem pleased though. Who knows what really happened in that bedroom. The next scene is Q going undercover as a Mexican landscaper. He achieves this by simply gluing the worst felt mustache to his upper lip and carrying a broom around.
A long sequence involving Sanchez explaining to “the Orientals” how he plans to hide his drugs in gasoline. We find out that Wayne Newton’s character is a total poon-hound. After Sanchez finds out that Bond is really an informant he tries to slowly kill him in a typical Bond villain manner. Setting up the death and then leaving the goddamn room without waiting for proof of death. Benicio Del Toro dies brutally and more than I expected for a PG movie. He’s thrown into a stone crusher and his blood sprays the camera like he was killed by fucking Jason Voorhees.
Bond chases Sanchez in a gas truck which appears to be a normal thing for Bond because he manages to get that fucking truck to drive on only the left wheels. Despite the fact that a truck that size would crush those tires. This isn’t the stupidest thing either because soon he does a goddamn wheelie in the son of a bitch. While watching this whole sequence I realized that I had seen this a thousand times when I was growing up and I thought it was stupid then. Some things just don’t change. If it weren’t for the stupid silly moments this entire sequence would be completely awesome. It has some crazy action that is really well done. However, it’s sort of hard to forget about a gas truck doing a wheelie through flames. The last of the crashes is when Bond manages to flip the gas truck that Sanchez is aboard. They are both left bloody and just generally dusty. For once a truck flipped over and managed to not explode. This never happens. Although, it’s not for long because as Bond is about to be sliced in half he pulls out a lighter on Sanchez (the one that the bride and groom gave him earlier) and lights Sanchez on fire. The entire truck then goes up in an explosion.
These two bitches seriously fight over Bond like a couple of middle school girls. When one is kissing him, the other must flee the scene and cry instantly. Bond ultimately chooses the girl that actually looks 14. But like a 14 year old that developed early because her giant tits are on display for the ENTIRE movie.
During the credits, we are shown something I have never seen before. Well, I’ve seen it before but never in a movie. It simply states, “As tobacco products are used in the film, the Producers wish to remind the audience of the SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING; ‘SMOKING CAUSES LUNG CANCER, HEART DISEASE, EMPHYSEMA, AND MAY COMPLICATE PREGNANCY.” I guess they smoked cigarettes somewhere in the movie and the producers want you to know that they do not approve. They say nothing about the fact that the entire plotline of the villain is that he’s a fucking DRUG DEALER. Because, let’s be honest, drugs are cool, just not cigarettes.
Overall, this was a decent one. I liked the plot but it was not a Bond plot. It reminded me more of Scarface. It had a lot of awesome stuff in it that was bogged down with a lot of bullshit women drama that he’s never dealt with before. Usually he just doesn’t give a shit about vagina and in this one he’s constantly going back and forth between the two like a love-triangle movie. It had decent villains and didn’t really have any lulls like the previous Dalton movie. Also, why the fuck was there so much Q in the field in this one?