Bond, Part 3

It's time for the third installment in my series of reviews of the James Bond movies. This time, I'm looking at the brief stint Timothy Dalton had in the role.

I remember thinking that at the time, Timothy Dalton was an absolutely horrible James Bond, and that the movies he was in were even worse. Years later, I think I was having a bit of an unfair reaction to the change of Bonds from Roger Moore. Just as many fans of the generation before mine rebelled against Moore and celebrated Connery as the "one true James Bond," so I and my generation rebelled against Timothy Dalton.

But now that I've seen the movies again recently, I have to say I don't think the reaction was entirely off the mark. Through his own acting and the choices of the producers in casting him, the decision was made for "Bond after Moore" to become a much more dour character. He was a real ass to everyone. He was very dark and broody. He smoked. All designed to be truer to the character in the original books, as I understand it (never having read any of them myself).

All well intentioned, I suppose. But there are still certain qualities Bond has to have, and Dalton didn't exhibit them, in my opinion. Bond is supposed to be charming, but in the moments Dalton tries to turn on the charm in his movies, I think he comes off smarmy. When he has to deliver one of James Bond's pithy one liners, he seems entirely too pleased with himself, almost like he's breaking the fourth wall.

But how were the movies themselves?

The Living Daylights - The pre-credits sequence of this film, about a test exercise turned real, is merely average, as are the credits and the theme song themselves. After that, though, the film gets interesting for a while. Helping a Russian defector get out of the country makes for a adventurous and sometimes suspenseful tale, and then the revelation that it was all a hoax is also engaging.

Unfortunately, then the "Bond girl" of this film hits center stage. Where I found the love interest of A View to a Kill annoying for her acting, this time I can't fault the woman playing the role. No, here it's the writing that's making her such a nuisance. The whole subplot of looking after her cello is annoying (and culminates in a fairly ridiculous sledding-in-a-cello-case chase). She's another one of the Bond girls that's supposed to be strong and independent, but she's more often shown as truly dense and helpless. Part of the "new Bond" of this film is that he's monogamous within the confines of this one movie, so he's shackled to her for the entire journey.

The climax lacks any one real, major villain that has enough screen time for you to get invested in. The action sequences are exciting, but not very well connected to one another. In the end, it all amounts to a C.

Licence to Kill - This is actually not a bad film. But it's a pretty terrible James Bond film. The real problem here is that this feels like some straight-up revenge movie, and it lacks any of the trappings that makes Bond what he is.

It has an awesome cast of character actors. These are "working actors" whose faces you've probably seen in countless other movies, and they're all collected here and doing good work. It has a great theme song (one of the few "Bond-like" elements in the movie) performed by Gladys Knight -- one of the "unsung heroes" of Bond themes, in my mind. It has an opening pre-credits sequence that, for once, is actually connected to the main plot of the movie, and not just an unrelated 10-minute adventure to get things rolling.

But Bond films bring certain expectations. Even the newest, Casino Royale, with its approach to reinvent the James Bond franchise, still honored these elements. Normally, Bond movies have enormous scope, jetting to several exotic locales and showing us amazing things we'll never see in life. Here, the entire movie is set in South Florida and Mexico. Normally, Bond is up against a villain with a slightly- to totally-larger-than-life scheme. Here, the villain is a simple drug lord that happens to harm one of Bond's friends. Normally, comedic moments are sprinkled throughout a Bond movie as part of the fabric of the story. Here, Wayne Newton is brought in for a cameo (mostly in the final act) to awkwardly punch up a story that's been too dark for too long.

Totalling it up, I give the movie a C+. I could mark it higher, if only I could divorce it mentally from the heritage of the series. (In much the same way that I must say that a lot about the movies Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection isn't bad, if you could somehow get away from the fact that they're supposed to be sequels to the completely-out-of-their-league-and-awesome Alien and Aliens.)

It's weird to "average" just two grades, but I guess technically you can do it. Dalton's movies come out a C+... or a C, depending on where you decide to round. Either way, unlike Connery and Moore, this is not a case of there being some good films and some bad ones. Dalton's are both middle-of-the-road. Worth seeing if you're being a completist (as I'm currently in the process of becoming), but otherwise probably best ignored.