License to Kill (1989)

Directed by John Glen. Starring Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell, Talisa Soto, Anthony Zerbe, Anthony Starke, Everett McGill, Desmond Llewelyn, Frank McRae, David Hedison, Benicio del Toro, Wayne Newton, Don Stroud, Robert Brown, Grand L. Bush, Priscilla Barnes, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Caroline Bliss. [PG-13]

Dalton’s second (and, sadly, last) outing as James Bond was the best entry in the venerable series since the 60s, reflecting a sea change in the overall texture and temperament by adapting the model to fit its 1980s inspirations (the Cold War in decline, ripped-from-the-headlines villainy, harder-edged violence, etc.). Here, Bond goes renegade and sets his sights on revenge against ruthless Colombian drug lord Franz Sanchez (Davi) and his accomplices, sowing the seeds of distrust within the organization and bringing the empire to ruin before asking his nemesis, “Don’t you want to know why?” Tough, gripping action film lacks a certain element of roguish pluck and debonair mystery that made the earliest pictures in the franchise rattle and hum, but its only inexplicable misstep is the bizarre casting of Wayne Newton as a corrupted TV evangelist (forgive the redundancy). Otherwise, it’s firing on all cylinders, delivering a top-notch cadre of bad guys (including a magnetic henchman played by del Toro in one of his earliest film roles), a pair of underrated Bond girls (Lowell as a resilient CIA agent and Soto as Sanchez’s abused mistress), a couple of exhilarating action scenes, and a kiss-off to the series’ persistently neutered and jokey escapist flavor—it’s the first Bond picture to receive a PG-13 rating, and it’s earned. Strangely enough, despite Bond being on the outs with MI6 for most of the film, Llewelyn gets more to to do here as Q than ever before. Gladys Knight performs the title track, although as it was with Dalton’s first effort, The Living Daylights, the song that plays over the end credits (Patti LaBelle’s “If You Asked Me To”) is better. Fifth and final film in the series to be directed by Glen and co-written by Michael G. Wilson. Pedro Armendáriz Jr., whose father had a major role in From Russia with Love, makes a brief appearance.

85/100