Country: United States
Genre: Action
Director: John Glen
Year: 1989
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
“What,” you say, “you’re including a James Bond flick on your Trash Cinema site?” Well, you have a point. You can’t get much more mainstream than James Bond. However, License to Kill is an oddity in the series. The tone of the film is closer to a Hong Kong action flick than the usual James Bond.
The violence in License to Kill is consistently mean-spirited and personal, but the producers saw fit to intersperse it with Roger Moore era broad comedy by the likes of Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton and throw in ridiculous action sequences, like the climax involving things like eighteen wheelers balancing on two wheels. The final result is seriously schizophrenic.
What were the producers thinking? Here’s my guess. Because of the success of the splatter movies of the 80s, graphic violence had been steadily increasing in mainstream movies and the Broccolis felt that they needed some of that trendy 80s graphic violence to compete with the likes of the Lethal Weapon series. At the same time, they wanted to hold onto the jokey elements that had made the Roger Moore Bond movies so (financially) successful.
The result is fascinating, if a little distasteful.
The plot? It’s basically a revenge saga. Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) feeds Bond’s brother in arms Felix Leiter to a shark and Bond (Timothy Dalton) resolves to infiltrate Sanchez’s drug empire and bring him down. Special credit has to go to Robert Davi as the main baddy. He registers as a real human being and not just the standard evil genius bent on taking over the world. Ditto for the character of Sanchez’s henchman (a young Benicio Del Toro), who oozes depravity, and poor Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), a victim of Bond’s trickery and Sanchez’ rather extreme notions about loyalty.
The end result of all of these conflicting impulses on the part of the James Bond producers is a James Bond mutant. Ugly as it is, you just have to look.
Besides, I LIKE mean spirited graphic violence, don’t you?
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