The Living Daylights (1987)

If nothing else, thank God the reign of Moore has ended.  I can’t tell whether I like Timothy Dalton yet or whether it’s just ABM (Anyone But Moore) syndrome, but The Living Daylights is a welcome return to serious form, a bit like For Your Eyes Only both in that sense and in the sense of being ultimately underwhelming.

After saving a Russian defector’s life from cellist/sniper Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo), James Bond (Timothy Dalton) finds his head spinning after said defector is apparently abducted by KGB agents out to kill all spies – “Smiert Spionom.”  The head of the KGB, though, denies any involvement, which puts Bond and Milovy on the trail of loony arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker), whose plan is honestly a bit of a headscratcher.

There’s no denying that The Living Daylights is meant to return Bond to his pre-Moore incarnation; he’s grimly sardonic, ruthless in dispatching his enemies, and even occasionally violent to women.  Basically, he’s Sean Connery circa From Russia With Love, and indeed The Living Daylights – on the 25th anniversary of the franchise – recalls its predecessors with more attention to international espionage, even amid the cooling tensions of the Gorbachev era. 

Dalton acquits himself well as a sterner Bond, gruff and distrustful of the move toward global peace.  He has his moments of chivalry – as when he spares the life of a female sniper early on – but most of his time is spent growling at the baddies, especially in a fun precredits sequence.  Fortunately, though, he’s not above a good one-liner, and even more fortunately the script knows not to toss them at us rapid-fire (as in one of the better scenes of The Spy Who Loved Me).

The rest of the script, though, is reminiscent of For Your Eyes Only in the sense that I really couldn’t tell you much of what it was about.  The plot is quite thin, usually an excuse to move from one rousing action sequence to another, and furthermore it’s unnecessarily complex; Bond aside, every character double-crosses another at least once, and by the time we get the expository monologue from the main villain it’s really not clear how each of the moving pieces contributes to the plan – which I’m still unclear whether it was about weapons, embezzling, drugs, or human trafficking.  It’s a bit silly to go into a James Bond film looking for logical consistency, because this is a movie that otherwise ticks the boxes quite nicely – Bond sleeps with a lot of women, blows a lot of things up, and stops the Russians in the end.  I just don’t know what he stopped them from doing.

But as I said, the rest of the film plays pretty well.  There’s a nice supporting role from John Rhys-Davies as the bewildered and beleaguered head of the KGB, though Joe Don Baker’s role as the villain comes off a little too campy, his gee-whiz obsession with military conquest more like a holdover from a Roger Moore film.  d’Abo is a competent Bond girl; one senses that she’s not just playacting at playing the cello or at aiming her sniper rifle, though it’s a shame that the movie kind of forgets about her halfway through, reducing her to arm candy and bedsheet occupation.

All of this is coming off negatively for The Living Daylights, but I didn’t actively dislike it, as has been the case with some of the more recent entries in this review series.  Maybe it’s due to the John Barry score, or maybe it’s just Moore fatigue, but I’m actually kind of excited to see more Timothy Dalton.  Even if no one else in the film production crew is, at least Dalton seems to be taking it seriously.

The Living Daylights is rated PG.  Surprisingly for a Bond movie, there are two shots of a topless woman and one of male rear nudity.  The violence is what we’ve come to expect – occasionally bloody shootouts and explosions.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Licence to Kill (1989) on May 7, 2014!  Meanwhile, stay tuned to The Cinema King later this morning for Captain America: The Winter Soldier!