Licence to Kill

Starts out interesting with Bond going on a personal vendetta but it hits a wall the moment he meets the woman pilot. It becomes increasingly boring after that with bland and boring characters througout and that includes the women. The character of Sanchez seems to be written with Davi in mind but he is unfortunately as dull as the rest. The finale is explosive (literally) but it can't save the movie as a whole. Pretty generic and you could easily replace Bond with a Joe Smith. Giving "Q" a bit more to do than usual and a very young Benicio del Toro are some saving grace but that's ultimately not why I watch the movie.

Well, wasn't this a pleasant surprise. A Bond that is short on all the nonsense, high on action - and a forerunner to the Craig years (which owed a lot to the Bourne series, which possibly took some direction from this harder Bond outing). I liked the plot, the villains, the harshness, the pacing... And Wayne Newton doesn't stink! I do not think Timothy Dalton is rough enough. He's pretty smooth but he doesn't have a toughness about him. Every time he draws his gun in a really convoluted manner, it gets me mad... He would definitely be shot in the time it takes. The soundtrack gave me a few issues as it sounds like Die Hard was used and augmented with the Bond theme. All in all though, this is a Top 5 Bond film. And it's a shame that the harsher, blunter Bond was seemingly ahead of its time. It would take Daniel Craig to return to this style of Bond. It would have been great for Brosnan to get this harshness rather than surfing on a car door. 8/10