Licence to Kill movie review

 Licence to Kill is Timothy Dalton's second appearance in a Bond film after The Living Daylights and is also his last Bond film.

Synopsis: A drug lord that James Bond and his friend Felix Leiter arrested in the opening scene escapes and brutally murders Felix's wife and leaves Felix for dead. After this Bond goes rogue and infiltrates an organization posing as a hitman, while seeking vengeance for those responsible.

My thoughts: I do think this movie is good and it is one of the more underrated Bond films. I think Timothy Dalton is well suited for the role and brings a certain darkness to the character. This movie can be seen as a sort of predecessor for Daniel Craig's grittier Bonds. One of the reasons why this movie was not received as well is probably that people were not ready for a grittier James Bond film. The previous Bonds were significantly more lighthearted and silly especially the Roger Moore films. This version of Bond however is much darker and he is a cold blooded assassin, and there are many brutal and very violent deaths in this movie, people are eaten by sharks etc.

During the movie it feels like there are stakes and that there are consequences for actions. Also Bond feels more like a human being in this film than in most of the other Bond films, there are exceptions to this for example Daniel Craig movies. People close to Bond get hurt or even killed and it clearly has an effect on him, and the vendetta he is on is changing him as a person. There is more nuance to him than in the other Bonds. I also want to say how great job Benicio Del Toro does as one of the villains of this movie, he is absolutely intimidating.

Spoiler warning! There is a thing that kind of bothers me and that is the ending. Now I said that it feels like there are consequences in this movie, well the end unfortunately throws all that away. Felix calls Bond and he is fine even though his wife died and he got almost eaten by a fucking shark. Also as you know Bond of course makes out with a girl. Maybe even the film makers were not ready for a Bond film with dire consequences. 

Verdict: I do think this is a good movie and even though it has it's problems I do recommend it. I'm going to give this movie 7.0/10