The Living Daylights (1987) | Underrated Classic

After A View to a Kill, Roger Moore finally hung up the James Bond coat filled with Q-branch gadgets and gave a younger actor a chance at the role. So, it was time for Timothy Dalton to assume the role of the superspy in The Living Daylights. It’s a shame he only got to play Bond for two movies because I think he does a commendable job as the iconic hero in both of his movies, and they manage to feel like they’re part of his era, despite their vast differences in tone.

It’s a personal shame it took me so long to see Dalton’s movies, too. Despite being a long-time Bond fan, I never saw either The Living Daylights or License to Kill until I got the Blu-ray set because they just never played during the James Bond marathons that would happen on TV when I was a kid. If I was allowed to rent a Bond movie from the local video store, they usually didn’t have Dalton’s movies or I just preferred to watch one of the Connery films. When I finally did see The Living Daylights for the first time, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it and felt like I had been missing out for all these years. It made me wonder why he didn’t continue after only two films because I thought he was perfect for the role. When it came time to watch the movie again for this review, it was actually the one I was most looking forward to rewatching. I can say that the second time around was just as good as the first, aside from my Blu-ray player failing on me…

Pros

Good old-fashioned espionage plot
Solid opening title and theme song
James Bond acts like a professional spy and a person who is capable of mistakes
Good stunts throughout the film, especially the plane sequence
Solid storytelling that allows the audience to be involved
Probably the most compelling romance between Bond and the main girl since From Russia with Love
Good usage of boobs as a distraction

Cons

Unsatisfying ends to uninteresting villains
Bond gets caught in sticky situations on the plane twice in a row for convenience’s sake
Heroin / Diamond smuggling detail feels like an unnecessary detour

Plot & Thoughts

The movie opens with Bond (Timothy Dalton) and other double-o agents doing a training mission with paintball guns. It’s all going fine until one of the masked men on the tour swaps his paintballs out for bullets and starts killing them. Bond catches on to the ruse and pursues the assassin in spectacular fashion before the opening credits start. The song by A-Ha, while not as good as Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill,” is still a pretty fun one with a solid credits sequence.

When the song ends, Bond is suddenly in another part of the world on a special extradition mission. He’s been specifically requested to be the agent to protect a defecting Soviet general as he escapes from a classical music concert. General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbe) is running across the street when Bond spots an enemy sniper in the window above him. As the sniper lines up her shot, he makes a quick decision to just shoot the gun instead of the sniper. He’s chastised for it by the other MI6 agent with him for deliberately missing, but Bond justifies that she looked inexperienced with the gun. You could say he might have been thinking with his other brain when he decided not to shoot her, but I think this is the first instance in which James Bond thinks something is up with the general’s escape plan.

Bond manages to help the surprisingly skittish, sniveling general across the Soviet border into ally territory. General Koskov meets with various MI6 members and diplomats to tell them that another soviet general, General Leonid Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies), has become a bloodthirsty fiend with a program to eliminate double-o agents. Before anyone can really plan what to do about this situation, a mysterious assassin shows up and kidnaps General Koskov. They have every reason to assume it’s the Soviets who kidnapped him, but it’s revealed to the audience that Koskov is actually the one who has gone rogue and is trying to ramp up the Cold War with the desire to make money arming either side with the help of Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker). Bond’s only lead as to where Koskov has been taken is the girl who was supposed to assassinate Koskov the night of his escape, Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo), a prominent cello player. Before long, more assassins are on the hunt for Kara to tie up the loose end and Bond becomes her protector as he further investigates what is going on.

Where to start? Perhaps, with Bond himself. This is the first of two films in which Timothy Dalton plays the role of Bond and it’s a real shame he wasn’t in more films because I think he does a great job as the character. While Connery may be my favorite of the Bond actors, I think Dalton is just suited in the casting of the character because he’s got a suave personality with the element of a dangerous and ruthless killer lying underneath. Not to downplay any of the other actors who have played Bond, but I think Dalton is simply the best actor of the bunch who is capable of more subtlety in his performances, regardless of the tone of the project. He already cut his teeth on playing a refined but damaged character in the Jane Eyre series before he got his license to kill, for example.

The angry side of Dalton’s Bond would be more prevalent in License to Kill, but there are still a few moments in The Living Daylights in which he shows an edge without losing his eloquence. In particular, the scene in which he confronts General Pushkin is a good demonstration of how two great actors control the scene and keep it tense. Bond is trying to find out if Pushkin is as mad as Koskov says he is, despite having a somewhat cordial relationship with the head of the KGB. They’re not quite friends, but also not quite enemies and Bond is in a tough situation in which he needs to interrogate Pushkin quickly and cannot afford to show a soft side towards him and blow his bluff. As an aside, it’s also a scene that I would argue is the best use of a woman’s breasts as a distraction I’ve seen in a Bond film.

One of the reasons I enjoy The Living Daylights so much is that it’s one of the movies in which there is some ambiguity in terms of alliances. Until Bond confronts Pushkin, he cannot be sure whether he is the real adversary or if Koskov is trying to set them up to kill each other. It’s similar to the ambiguity of alliances Bond had in For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, From Russia with Love, and The Spy Who Loved Me. Bond’s familiarity with Pushkin is telling him that Koskov is lying, but Kara insists that Koskov is a decent man. Bond cannot fully trust Kara or her judgement, but he is also falling for her over the course of the movie and you get the impression he doesn’t want to hurt her perception of him. We as the audience have the advantage of additional knowledge not privy to Bond about who are the real enemies, which can sometimes backfire if the characters are not smart enough to figure it out, but Bond is no fool in this movie. He’s observant and cautious without compromising his abilities in a tense moment that requires quick decisions. We don’t know if Bond will make the right choice, and sometimes he doesn’t, but the movie ends up being more interesting and tense as a result without denigrating Bond’s intelligence.

There’s more to the movie than the cat-and-mouse games of espionage too. The Living Daylights is still a solid action movie that is well-shot and exciting. The scene in which the blond assassin steals Koskov is fast-paced and ruthless. The chase sequences in the Aston Martin and sledding down the snowy slopes with the cello in hand are explosive and exciting. And the series of events in Afghanistan, while feeling like a bit of a detour from everything else that’s happening in the plot, has some great action sequences. There are a few moments during this climactic portion of the movie that feel like forced action or circumstances that should have been avoidable due to the choices Bond makes, specifically when he steals the plane. However, there are also some great stunts and explosive effects during this section to make up for it.

The only place where The Living Daylights fails for me is in its villains. Despite really enjoying this movie the first time I saw it, I forgot the plot of the movie over time because it is so specifically focused on the villains, who are, ultimately, uninteresting. They’re not the worst villains of the franchise, by any stretch of the imagination; they’re just not as memorable as the others Bond has faced. Koskov and Whitaker feel very one-note between the two of them. That might have something to do with the fact that Joe Don-Baker is not capable of much nuance in his performances, but I think it’s also that Whitaker is easily summarized as an arms dealer who doesn’t care who wins the wars that are using his weapons. When he’s finally confronted and defeated by Bond, it’s an unsatisfying climax because it doesn’t ever feel like he has the advantage over Bond, and that proves true with how easily he’s dispatched.

Koskov has a little more to him in how he’s trying to play both sides and has a relationship with Kara, but he also just doesn’t have enough charisma or presence to measure up to other villains. When I compare it to other Bond films in which there were multiple primary villains, Quantum of Solace comes to mind for a couple of reasons. That film has a main antagonist responsible for the majority of the plot and a secondary antagonist who has a specific connection to the main woman of the film. Another similarity with Quantum of Solace is that the villains in that movie are forgettable, but I’ll go into more detail in that movie’s review.

TL;DR

It may have taken until my adulthood to finally see The Living Daylights for the first time, but it quickly became one of my favorite movies of the whole James Bond franchise. Timothy Dalton starts his brief era very strong with this movie and makes me wish that he stuck around a little longer because he fits perfectly into the role in an entertaining movie that manages to have a good balance of espionage, action, and romance. Its villains are not very memorable or interesting, but the movie makes up for it with some solid action and amazing stunts.

Hair of the Dog Drinking Game Rule

There aren’t too many things that specifically happen in The Living Daylights multiple times to warrant a drinking rule, so it took me a while to choose one. The rule I have I’m not particularly proud of, but the rest of the James Bond drinking game rules should be sufficient to get you from beginning to end.

I cannot think of any other Bond movie that has a prominent character involved in a musical instrument, and that happens to be an important detail to Kara, so let’s make it important to your own experience.