The first of two Bond movies starring Timothy Dalton, both are set smack dab in the middle of the greatest decade ever, the 1980’s. I don’t think I’ve seen either of these and I’m not sure why, I have no idea about the plots or their reception in the overall Bondverse. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with how great On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was with Lazenby at the helm for just one movie so maybe these will follow suit and be good.
Cast of Characters –
Bond, James Bond: Timothy Dalton (x1)
Big Bad: General Pushkin played by John Rhys-Davies.
Femme Fatale/Bond Girl’s: Kara Milovy played by Maryam d’Abo
Ladies who had the pleasure of being James Boned: Just 2 (Lady on the yacht and Kara)
Moneypenny: Caroline Bliss (x1) takes over for the amazing Lois Maxwell (x13)
M: Robert Brown (x3)
Q: Desmond Llewelyn (x12)
Foreign Agents/Helpful Scoundrel – Felix Leiter is back! Played by John Terry
Theme Song: The Living Daylights, composed by John Barry and Pal Waaktaar and performed by a-ha
Director: John Glen (x4)
The Movie – We start in what looks to be a wartime exercise with a giant mountain base and a beach. It’s Gibralter apparently and the exercise is for 00’s, they need to infiltrate a radar base, 3 of them skydive out of an airplane. There’s a dude in the mountains that sees them, one of the 00’s gets shot with a paint ball gun straight away and is out of the exercise. Oh shit there’s a guy using real ammunition and he kills someone and cuts the rope of one of the 00’s. Now we see Bond and he goes after the guy who just cut the other 00’s rope. James finds the dead guy and gets attacked by a monkey. James see’s the fake 00 and jumps on his jeep that he’s trying to get away in down a super treacherous mountain pass. The fake 00 is using a PPK7 with a silencer and trying to shoot bond as they barrel down the mountain. For some reason there are boxes of explosives in the back of the jeep the fake 00 is in, and the jeep catches on fire. James gets into the cab of the jeep and they battle it out as on fire boxes of explosives fall out the back and they almost kill tons of people. The jeep goes off a cliff and James somehow has a 2nd parachute and gets out before it crashes. There is a scantily clad woman in a bikini on a yacht and Bond lands on it and steals her cell phone to call HQ. He says to pick him up in an hour, but since she was just complaining about needing a real man she invites him for a drink and he says better make that pickup in 2 hours. JAMES BONED. Dalton gets down to the dirty business real quick in this one.
Now the title screen and song, the song is actually really great, it’s by the sweet 80’s band A-ha. Bond is at the orchestra now, apparently he is going to assassinate someone? Yup he’s going to kill some KGB dude. There’s some KGB defector who Bond is protecting from a sniper I guess. His sniper gun is seriously freaking huge, the other dude has night vision on. Looks like one of the orchestra players is going to be the Bond girl? Oh no she’s the sniper? Bond doesn’t kill her just hits her weapon. The sniper lady leaves in a huff and James looks concerned, he still has his huge weapon, he hands it to the other agent and then Bond takes off with the Russian traitor/asset. They are literally going to get him out of the country in a tube for natural gas LOL. The contact at the pipeline who helps Bond is awesome and sticks some dudes face in her boobs to distract him as the Russian contact goes through the pipeline. The Russian dude comes out the other side and Q is right there waiting for him, they load him into a fighter jet and he takes off. Oh we get the title of the movie from Bond as he chides the other agent for wanting to report him for not killing the sniper.
New moneypenny! LOL Q shows Bond a ghettoblaster, a giant boombox that shoots rockets. James and moneypenny flirt and according to the sound affect he totally slapped her ass! Bond heads to some giant country estate and there is a milkman who gets killed by another milkman, so some shady stuff is about to go down. Bond meets up with M and gov’t officials and the Russian guy is there with them. Bond brought the Russian dude caviar and champagne. The gate guard notices the new milkman and gives him a good frisking. I feel this KGB defector is about to get assassinated. Bond lights up a thick old cigarette as the KGB dude tries to give them some juicy intel. The fake milkman kills someone in the kitchen and attacks another dude, and they get into an epic fight. Milkman wins and then has milk bombs lol, he kills lots of dudes trying to get at the defector. A helicopter is now there to take the defector back, there is a mccaw in this scene for some reason. They totally steal the defector back.
Bond gets orders to kill General Pushkin, but doesn’t like it. He finds out that Pushkin wants him dead and even though M thinks about giving it to another 00, Bond steps up to assassinate him. Bond is now with Q going through more gadgets, and his car looks amazing it’s an Aston Martin! I just built the Bond Astin Martin LEGO set, it was a fun build. Bond is tracking down the sniper girl, who is a cellist. She gets taken away by the police and look who it is General Pushkin wants her for some reason, I’m sure its nefarious. Bond snags her cello and takes it into a bathroom stall and opens it up to find the sniper rifle. Bond brings the girl, Kara, her cello back and said he put the gun in the river. Bond interrogates her about Pushkin then sneaks her out of her apartment. She wants to get her cello but Bond is adamant they can’t, but surprise surprise they go get it. He really has a soft spot for this girl. They are in the mountains now and the police try to get them to pull over. Bond uses a freaking laser on their car LOL that was awesome. Now Bond is shooting missles to get past road blocks! The CGI and tech is a real step up in this movie. Now they have tanks after them cripes! The Russians are super pissed and really trying to blow up Bond and Kara, but failing pretty spectacularly until Bond loses a tire, oh but he uses it to his advantage to cut a hole in the ice and now the car has skis. This chase scene is freaking epic. They are now riding the cello case down the mountain.
They escape into Austria and we change scenery to Tangier now. General Pushkin is meeting with someone with some weird dude who is obsessed with war. Yogi and the dude who just had the meeting with Pushkin are swimming with bikini clad women. So far I’m really liking the plot on this one. Bond is at the opera with Kara, they have really good chemistry. It’s crazy that Yogi the defector setup his rescue and it was all a ploy. Bond is now with Kara at the fair and they are seeming to have a genuine good time. Bond is trying to get her safely out of the country, I feel like it’s not going to end well for her. Bond and her are now making out hardcore. Oh snap the other agent just got killed by the dude who helped Yogi escape from British custody, Bond is pissed and looking for balloon guy.
Bond is now in Tangier looking for Yogi. Bond is following General Pushkin and has his signature PPK7 with a silencer. Bond wants to assassinate Pushkin but I think he won’t, we’ll find out very soon. Bond doesn’t kill him and so the guy who got Yogi out of British custody is at some ceremony about to kill him. Bond does it instead, but I’m guessing was totally faked, he’s not dead. I was right! Bond is on the run now, there are several women in a car and some sexy music playing so he gets in the car with them, and they now have a gun on him. They take him to a yacht and Felix mofreaking Leiter is there and the CIA are now working with Bond. They have some stiff drinks and talk shop. Bond and Kara now have some drinks and here’s his signature shaken not stirred vodka martini, Kara remembers how to make it. She poisoned him! Nooooooooooo, now Yogi is there and being creepy with Kara. They smuggle Bond out of the country with a human heart? That scene was weird. They’ve got James handcuffed now and there’s diamonds hidden in the heart chest and it’s not a human heart, it’s an animal heart. Now Yogi is going to spill the beans on his plans to Bond while they think he’s handcuffed.
They are now in Afghanistan and Yogi sends Kara with Bond to Russia. James uses his knockout gas keychain to pwn everyone and then fights the jailer guy, who just shook off the knockout gas like a psycho. Kara is stoked they are free but James points out there in the middle of a Russian airbase in Afghanistan so they are not that free. They escape off the base but get immediately attacked by crazy afghan fighters, and are saved because they let an afghan prisoner out of his cell after killing the guards earlier. James and Kara are taken to town and put in a fancy room for some reason. They meet up with the guy who they helped escape and he is some leader of the Mujahidin, he went to Oxford and also has a British accent. Bond wants to go kill Yogi.
They head out and Bond finds out they have massive amounts of Heroine they are going to sell to some other local afghan clan who is then selling it to the Russians for the diamonds. Bond sneaks onto the Russian vehicles and after the Afghan fighter refuse to help, Kara steals the one dudes gun and takes off after the Russian caravan. Bond sneaks onto the plane that has all the drugs and then the Mujahidin dudes all show up and kick ass. Bond decides to try and fly the plane as the huge battle is going on Kara catches up and drives onto the plane but the assassin guy got on the plane before the back hatch closed. Bond and him now fight and it’s pretty gnarly. They are literally hanging out the plane and fighting on a giant cargo net filled with heroin, EPIC. Bond wins but there’s still a bomb on the plane that needs taking care of, Bond does with 2 seconds left. Bond then uses the defused bomb to kill the Russians who are still fighting the Mujahidin. They then run out of fuel on the plane and catapult out of the back in the jeep and drive off. Bond is now on a secret mission to kill Yogi and the other arms dealer dude after surviving the craziest flight ever. The weird arms dealer guy bests Bond after he gets the drop on him and doesn’t kill him for some reason. James finally kills him with a wolf whistle and his explosive key chain. We end with Kara playing her Cello and after the concert meeting up with James for some martinis and hardcore making out.
Well I was pleasantly surprised with just how damn good this one was. Dalton was freaking fantastic, Kara was one of the hottest Bond girls and had excellent chemistry with Bond. The locations were awesome and varied, the chases were good, the gadgets were cool, and the CGI and explosion better than any other movie so far. The only flaw was that, along with so many other Bond movies, it didn’t need to be over 2 hours long, it went on for just a tad too long. I give this one 8 out of 10 PPKs.
My First to worst my rankings after The Living Daylights:
Goldfinger
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The Living Daylights
Moonraker
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Dr. No
Thunderball
A View to A Kill
Octopussy
You Only Live Twice
Diamonds are Forever
For Your Eyes Only
Live and Let Die
Never Say Never Again
From Russia with Love
Ellie’s Thoughts: This is now my second favorite after OHMSS. Timothy Dalton is possibly my favorite Bond so far; I loved the depth he brought to the character, much like Lazenby’s portrayal. The bond girl was beautiful and actually had a personality, and the plot was more grounded in reality and relevant to the political climate of the late 80’s which was a major departure from the campy, silly plots of the Roger Moore films. Overall I enjoyed this one although it ran about a half hour too long.
I give The Living Daylights 9 out of 10 martinis shaken, not stirred.
Up next Licence to Kill
Cuppa 