The Living Daylights (1987) - John Glen
before iPods and U2, there was Maurice Binder, the Bond franchise and A-Ha!
The Plot
James Bond helps a maverick Russian general defect to the UK, but is immediately snatched back by the KGB thereafter. Or did they? Bond, with the general's supposed girl friday, tracks the suspect all over the globe, ending up right smack in the middle of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. The whole thing turns out to be a complicated arms-for-drugs deal, a murky aspect of secret wars between nations during the Cold War.
Grade: A-
Locales
Gibraltar, Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, Tangiers, Afghanistan
Grade: B+
The Man
Timothy Dalton
The next Bond proved to be the rugged Dalton, whose theater work gave the role an rougher edge. No hints of drifting to camp here, and despite being made during the everything-is-big 80's, Dalton's minimalistic approach to the role endeared him to Desmond Llewelyn (the exalted Q), who prefers his work over any other actor who played Bond.
Grade: A-
The Villain(s)
General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbe) - I kept wondering where I saw this guy before - oh, yeah! He was Harrison Ford's best friend/secret villain in The Fugitive. So basically we can play Looping Six Degrees or less here ... Sean Connery played Bond, Dalton does, and here he worked with Krabbe, and Krabbe worked with Ford, and Ford also worked with Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Woohooo! Wait, where the hell was Kevin Bacon?
Anyway, Krabbe seems too jolly/happy-go-lucky as the Russian second-in-command to General Pushkin (successor to the D.O.M. General Anatol Gogol, a recurring character since the 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me), who fakes a defection for a internal powerplay and a billion dollar windfall. I guess that might explain it. Overconfidence is nothing new for Bond villains and they always lose.
if this was a Soviet general, then i'm James Bond
Necros (Andreas Wisniewski) - The main baddie always needs a hatchet man, and the appropriately-named blond Soviet has explosive milk bottles as part of his arsenal. quite a leap from Oddjob's metal hat. anyway, tall, mysterious Eastern European bogeymen seem to be a favorite in action films (Alexander Godunov, Die Hard) and are always pesky roaches to kill.
Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker) - Brad Whitaker. Sounds like a pretty boy actor. Only here he's a loony arms dealer with a historical battles/exotic weapon fetish. A nice change from the cookie-cutter mad industrialist. Baker didn't know it yet, but after his appearance here, he would go on to play another character in the later Bond films, but on the side of the angels this time.
General Leonid Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies) - Holy shit! Its Gimli! He used to be the head of the Soviet military! How could we have missed that! Anyway, the enemy of his enemy is his friend, so Bond teams up with Pushkin to flush out Koskov.
Grade: B+
The Girl(s)
Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo) - And i thought Tanya Roberts' character was whiny. d'Abo, playing spoiled cello prodigy Kara, may even claim to be worse. Dumb enough to be duped by such a powerful Russian military man (Koskov) to play a role in his fake defection, she thinks she's in love with him and he loves her too, but very easily falls for Bond's charms. I mean you can sell the Brooklyn Bridge to this girl. Seriously. d'Abo must be like this in real life; if so, then she deserves a damn Oscar.
Miss Moneypenny (Caroline Bliss) - There's a new Moneypenny in da house! The venerable Lois Maxwell gets sent out to pasture (she probably did the nasty with Roger Moore off the set to uh, offset the mere teasing she gets on the set - okay, kidding, folks). Unfortunately, she also took a lot of the character with her, leaving Bliss nothing to build on or offer.
Bush and Kim Jong Il have more chemistry than these two
Linda (Kell Tyler) - Rich young lass on a yacht, bored by playboys and tennis players, suddenly finds Bond dropping by via a burning parachute. Voila! Quickies were already in vogue back in 1987.
Grade: B-
Gadgets
Minimalism, thy new name is Bond. The most used (and with good measure) gadget in this movie was a simple key ring. based on certain whistled tunes (a wolf-whistle being one of them), the key ring emits stun gas or functions as an IED (an intentional explosive device, nyuk nyuk), the latter functionality being useful in taking out Whitaker.
Of course, there's Necros and his novel exploding milk bottles (there were real-life reports of people jumping out to the bushes whenever their milkman came by to deliver).
Q, as usual, had more goodies in his lab, including a personnel-"swallowing" sofa and a boombox modified as a rocket launcher. too bad, it would have been fun to see Bond strutting with this 'ghetto blaster' in the steppes of Afghanistan to the derisive laughter of Soviet troops, before he cuts loose (a-la that guitar guy in Desperado) and blows them to smithereens. Even Whitaker had the cooler guns.
Grade: B
Bond Moments
Despite Dalton's serious style, there's still a few outrageous moments:
Koskov gets smuggled out of Russia via the Trans-Siberian Pipeline, with the help of an Amazon (yeah you gotta watch that ...)
Whitaker and Koskov celebrating in Tangiers - just goes to show communism was a hollow idea ... money rules, baby!!!
Bond and Necros dangle by the rear ramp of a cargo jet, until one of them loses it. So that's where they swiped it for Air Force One.
Bond and Kara escapes the soldiers by sledding down the slopes in Kara's cello case.
"how this girl managed to get me to play the cello while sledding, i don't know."
Whitaker, a phony soldier to begin with, has all the memorabilia and scale models of historical wars, and it was fitting that he died in his own playland, getting pinned by a statue.
Grade: B+
One Liners
Kara: You were fantastic. We're free.
Bond: Kara, we're inside a Russian airbase in the middle of Afghanistan.
[and to that, we add "DO'H!"]
Q: [to Bond] Something we're making for the Americans. It's called a "Ghetto Blaster".
Miss Moneypenny: That girl must be very talented.
Bond: Believe me, my interest in her is purely professional.
Bond did not soooo hit that!
[struggling with Kara's cello]
Bond: Why didn't you learn the violin?
[Kamran Shah, mujahideen leader, welcomes Bond and Kara to their hideout]
Shah: Thank you both for your help. My name is Kamran Shah. Please forgive the theatricals, it's a hangover from my Oxford days.
Bond: Just taking the Aston out for a spin, Q.
Q: Be careful, 007! It's just had a new coat of paint!
[Bond lets Necros fall to his death by cutting off his bootlaces]
Kara: What happened?
Bond: He got the boot.
[Whitaker gets crushed under a statue of the Duke of Wellington]
Bond: He met his Waterloo.
Grade: B+
Overall
After a Scot, an Aussie and an Englishman, we now have a Welshman (Irish Pierce Brosnan would soon complete the "islands of the north atlantic" grouping). Dalton had specific ideas on how to play Bond, and not everyone liked them - he himself even turned down the role twice (to work on Brenda Starr - yeeeeccch). The glamour and attraction of Bond was its outrageous, wink-wink style, and suddenly we get a real cold warrior who sometimes finds it hard to break into a smile. The Living Daylights was smart enough to incorporate issues of the day - Afghanistan for example - and breaking in a new Bond gave them a chance to take some risks with the story. An auspicious start for Dalton, but alas, it wasn't to last.
well, the other fans should be thankful it wasn't this New Zealander ...
Neill. Sam Neill.
Grade: B
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