The Living Daylights

The essential stuff of the James Bond franchise are so familiar to fans that it can be good again only by the addition of humor. Sadly, that is the one aspect where the new Bond, Timothy Dalton, seems to be lacking. He’s a good actor, he does very well in his scenes, he does well in the serious scenes, but he never really gets it that this is all a joke.

Roger Ebert sated in his review, “The correct tone for the Bond films was established right at the start, with Sean Connery's quizzical eyebrows and sardonic smile. He understood that the Bond character was so preposterous that only lightheartedness could save him. The moment Bond began to act like a real man in a real world, all was lost. Roger Moore understood that, too, but I'm not sure Dalton does.”

Ebert goes on to say, “Dalton is rugged, dark and saturnine, and speaks with a cool authority. We can halfway believe him in some of his scenes. And that's a problem, because the scenes are intended to be preposterous. The best Bond movies always seem to be putting us on, to be supplying the most implausible and dangerous stunts in order to assure us they can't possibly be real.” In “The Living Daylights,” released in 1987, there is a part where Bond and his girlfriend escape the villain by sliding down a snowy mountain in a cello case, and it looks like Dalton thinks this is possible in any way.

The story of this movie is the same thing that the recent headlines at the time and lush locations. Bond, who is tasked to help a rebel Russian general (John Rhys-Davies) fault to the West, runs into a story involving a crooked American arms dealer (Joe Don Baker), the war in Afghanistan and a plan to rob a half-billion dollars worth of opium. The story takes Bond from London to Prague, from mountains to deserts, from a chase down the slopes of Gibraltar to a fight that takes place while Bond and his villain are hanging out of an airplane. Everything we have already seen.

One aspect that isn’t the same in this movie is Bond’s love life. Obviously because of the AIDS epidemic at the time, Bond is not his usual flirty person, and he sleeps with only one, or maybe two, women in the entire film (that depends if you count the title scene, where he parachutes on a boat that has a woman in a bikini). This type of personal restriction is nice, coming from Bond, but given his past history with women is that it’s definitely the women, not Bond, who is at risk.

The main female character is Kara, played by Maryam d’Abo, the Russian cellist, who gets involved in the story with the Russian general, tries to work against Bond and eventually become a Bond girl. Ebert noted, “As the only "Bond girl" in the movie, d'Abo has her assignment cut out for her, and unfortunately she's not equal to it. She doesn't have the charisma or the mystique to hold the screen with Bond (or Dalton) and is the least interesting love interest in any Bond film.”

There’s another problem. The bond films are good or bad when it comes to their villains, and Joe Don Baker, as the arms-dealing Whitaker, is not one of the best Bond villains. Ebert describes Whitaker as “a kooky phony general who plays with toy soldiers and never seems truly diabolical.” Without the perfect Bond girl, a memorable villain or a protagonist with a sense of humor, “The Living Daylights’ belongs somewhere at the bottom of the list of 007 films. The redeeming fact is that there are some nice stunts.

I’m sorry to say, I was not very fond of this movie when I saw it. I found it to be a bad Bond film that was not going to be memorable in any way. I know I said that about some of the Bond films, but that is the case when it comes to a franchise that has been going on for a long time now. If you want to pass this one, do so, because you won’t miss much.

However, Timothy Dalton tried one more time at playing 007. Is it better than this one or will it be horrible and worse than this one? Stay tuned tomorrow to find out in “James Bond Month.”