BEFORE: Timothy Dalton carries over from "The Living Daylights" into his second and final Bond film. As Billy Joel once sang, "Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again."
THE PLOT: A vengeful British spy goes rogue and sets off to unleash vengeance on a drug lord who tortured his best friend, a CIA agent, and left him for dead
AFTER: I'm finally seeing the big picture, the transition of Bond over the years, from "Dr. No" to the most recent films. It starts with the impeccable Connery, goes through Roger Moore in his white tuxes, and ends (so far, anyway) with Daniel Craig covered in sweat, tied to a chair, with a villain torturing his undercarriage. Somewhere in the middle is the Dalton transitional phase - he cleans up real nice, but he's also able to get down and dirty.
There are a lot of articles out now about the evolution of the Superman character over the years (and I will get to "Man of Steel" this summer, I promise...) and I think something similar took place with James Bond. The changes in any long-standing character played by several actors can be seen as changes in the entire Hollywood system, changes in filmmaking technology and storytelling techniques in general, since every film is a product of its own time. So watching the Dalton Bond reminds me of one of the Superman reboots, perhaps the one in 1986, when DC Comics felt that maybe people weren't identifying with Superman because he was too powerful, had too many abilities beyond those of mortal men. So to humanize him they decided that he'd still be able to lift an oil tanker, for example, but the audience would see him struggle to do so.
I thought of this while watching the end sequence, where Bond takes out a druglord, 4 gasoline tankers, and about 2 dozen henchmen and minions. He doesn't do this with a remote explosive, or a missile launcher, but by jumping from vehicle to vehicle (somewhat cribbed from "Raiders of the Lost Ark", but I digress) and of course this would be completely impossible in real life, but because he's Bond, and because it's a movie, he gets to succeed. However, at the end he's dirty, bloodied, and quite worn out. A bit of realism in an otherwise unrealistic endeavor.
Although I appreciated the overall tone here, I don't recommend that other people watch the Bond films all run together like I'm doing - it turns out they were never meant to be viewed this way. Seeing one every two or three years is much better, because you then might not notice how many story elements get cribbed from earlier Bond films. Here we've got the "Bond goes rogue" plot again (to cover up the fact that British Intelligence has no jurisdiction over a Central American drug cartel), and a drug-lord villain with a pet shark (cribbed from "Live and Let Die"). Bond also manages to sow distrust within the villain's own operation, which was sort of part of "The Man With the Golden Gun".
LOCATIONS: Florida Keys, Bahamas, Bimini, Isthmus (stand-in for Panama, I guess)
VILLAINS: Franz Sanchez, Milton Krest, Prof. Joe Butcher, Dario
BABES: Pam Bouvier, Lupe Lamora
ALLIES: M, Q, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter (who's somehow old again, looking like he did in "Live and Let Die" - go figure...)
PASTIMES: Skydiving, scuba diving, blackjack
CARS: Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II, Lincoln Continental Mark VII LSC
GADGETS: fingerprint-sensitive sniper rifle, plastic explosive toothpaste
THEME: "Licence to Kill" by Gladys Knight. Fits the bill, I suppose.
Also starring Robert Brown, Desmond Llewellyn, Caroline Bliss (all three carrying over from "The Living Daylights"), Carey Lowell, Robert Davi, Benicio Del Toro (last seen in "China Moon"), Talisa Soto, Anthony Zerbe (last seen in "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!"), David Hedison (last seen in "Live and Let Die"), Frank McRae, Everett McGill, with cameos from Priscilla Barnes (last seen in "The Crossing Guard") and Wayne Newton (!) (last heard in "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil")
RATING: 4 out of 10 Stinger missiles
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