The Cast
Timothy Dalton (James Bond); Carey Lowell (Pam Bouvier); Talisa Soto (Lupe Lamora); Anthony Zerbe (Milton Krest); Robert Davi (Franz Sanchez)Robert Brown ("M"); Caroline Bliss (Moneypenny); Desmond Llewellyn ("Q"); Don Stroud (Heller); Benicio Del Toro (Dario); Wayne Newton (Prof. Joe Butcher)
Review
License To Kill starts off with a whimper, steadily builds up a nice pace and then falls apart a little more than halfway through. The film begins when South American drug lord Franz Sanchez slips into United States territory in an effort to snatch back his wayward girlfriend, former Miss World Lupe Lamora. Meanwhile, tipped off to his presence, CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison), along with 007, go after Sanchez in hot pursuit, despite the fact that Felix is due to be married in less than an hour. Caught in the middle of trying to escape, Sanchez bails out on his girlfriend, commandeers a light aircraft, and takes off for what we are to presume as Cuba. 007, always thinking ahead, devises an ingenious scheme to reel Sanchez' plane in. Needless to say, 007 saves the day, and gets Felix to the church on time. I've tried to keep the summary of the pre-title sequence brief, but it's hard to do. There is quite a lot going on all at once . Director John Glen tries to shuffle the storylines of Della Churchill( Priscilla Barnes) waiting impatiently at the church, 007 and Felix changing plans, and Sanchez trying to escape all at once. It comes off disjointed and just does'nt flow evenly and smooth. The whole sequence should've been fleshed out and expanded after the credits were over. Instead, a plotline that should've taken a good 15 minutes to go through and nurture is squeezed into just a little over 9. After a terrible title sequence and a completely flat tune sung by Gladys Knight, we see Sanchez trying to worm his way out of captivity with one of his famous million dollar bribes. This particular scene highlights some of the worst acting in the film. Both Everett McGill and Robert Davi are good actors who've moved on to other projects, so I can only guess that the fault for this scene lies with John Glen. Milton Krest, who uses a marine biology center as a front for drug smuggling, has to come in and help set Franz free. Before leaving back for his home country, Sanchez takes an opportunity to get revenge on Felix Leiter, by feeding his legs to a shark and having Felix's newlywed wife raped and murdered. Fun for the whole family,right? The film gets a nice steady pace going, intermixing lavish action sequences with plot advancement. Then the film switches locations, and the whole thing becomes bogged down. Much of the prerelease hype for the movie concerned the locations to be used (Key West and Acapulco) the villains (a drug lord who likes to whip his victims) and, as usual, the Bond Girls (one of whom has a "mysterious past"). None of these particular elements are played out to their maximum advantage except for Key West. The beauty of Mexico and it's culture are squandered, as the producers decided to have Mexico double for a fictional South American country called Isthmus. Even more interesting is the lack of the whip used by Sanchez. After a brief glimpse of it in the first minute of the film, it disappears for good, thus taking away the one idiosyncrasy that would help this villain stand out. Ex-bush pilot Pam Bouvier is supposed to have a mysterious past, but it's just a minor footnote to the film that has little to no real signifigance to the plot. There's a whole host of minor Bond villains to be found in the supporting cast, including Wayne Newton of all people, but none are worthy of more mention than this. None stand out. Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto are adequate as the Bond Girls. Lowell's role is puzzling. She talks tough as an independent bush pilot whose been to hell and back, but for some inexplicable reason gets into a jealous fit when seeing 007 flirting with another woman. Just another one of the many oddities of this film. Roger Ebert, when reviewing this film, mentioned that it had an 'incomplete feel to it, as though something were missing '. He's right. Coherent and fluent dialogue is missing. Transitional scenes are missing. Motivation for the characters actions are missing. And so was longtime 007 writer Richard Maibaum. Though he contributed to it, a writer's strike, which he honored, forced him to withdraw his particpation any further in finishing up the 'License' script. Though Richard was a great writer, it's doubtful that his full participation in 'License' would've made much difference. The film was a bad idea, poorly conceived, poorly written and poorly acted at a time in particular that could'nt have been worse for the Bond series.
