Licence to Kill

The James Bond production team has found its second wind with Licence to Kill, a cocktail of high-octane action, spectacle and drama...The thrills-and-spills chases are superbly orchestrated as pic spins at breakneck speed through its South Florida and Central American locations. Read full review

On the basis of this second performance as Bond, Dalton can have the role as long as he enjoys it. He makes an effective Bond - lacking Sean Connery's grace and humor, and Roger Moore's suave self-mockery, but with a lean tension and a toughness that is possibly more contemporary. Read full review

If Licence to Kill has one of Bond`s best heavies, it also has one of his best heroines in Carey Lowell, a strapping brunet who plays an ex-Army pilot reluctantly enrolled on Bond`s side. Lowell`s line readings may be only adequate, but she moves with the grace and vigor an action movie needs. Read full review

The series has been with us since 1962 and, like many another old timer, tends to repeat itself. Yet, every once in a while, it pulls in its stomach, pops the gun from its cummerbund, arches its eyebrow and gets off another bull's-eye. The newest, Licence to Kill, is probably one of the five or six best of Bond. Read full review

Not since Dr. No has 007 been so cool and ruthless, and never has a plot been this close to realistic plausibility. Read full review

One of the best of the 16 Bond films, thanks to Dalton's athletic, tough and deadly new 007. Read full review

If Licence to Kill added more than just scenes with Q to lighten the load, if it provided a love interest as compelling as Vesper and more engaging than Lowell's whiny Pam Bouvier, this Bond could have been one of the instant greats, instead of one that is better appreciated with age. The movie is not perfect, but a lot of what works now in the series got its start in Dalton's last mission as James Bond. Read full review

Despite some shaky narrative continuity and muddled motivations, this manages to move pretty briskly, and the action sequences are generally well handled, especially at the climax. Read full review

A pure, rousingly entertaining action movie which makes it clear that "binary oppositions" are good guys vs. bad guys and "ideological meanings" are us vs. them[17 July 1989, p.52]

Licence to Kill continues the salvage operation begun in The Living Daylights and rescues a series that was in danger of shooting itself in the foot. Read full review

Despite the revival of narrative vigor accompanying Licence to Kill, you will perhaps sense that I find it too sane, too engineered. Preposterousness seems an integral part of the James Bond universe, which I'd hate to think was turning rational, falling into step with the '80s by abandoning fancifulness. Mercifully, Licence to Kill isn't altogether stripped of excess. [14 July 1989, p.65]

Mildly entertaining but not terribly exciting. Agent 007 seems to have fallen victim to the foulest villainy he has yet encountered: mismanagement behind the camera. The movie cost $34 million, but you don't see it on the screen. [14 July 1989, p.4]

Until its roaring-semis climax, there is no genuine excitement here. Only 133 characteristically overlong minutes of painlessly watchable bubble bath. [14 July 1989, p.1D]

But this cruise is also a gruesome one. You may find yourself shaken -- not stirred -- by the screenwriting cruelty and cynicism behind the 16th "Bond." Read full review

As unlikely as it seems, Mr. Dalton actually appears to be growing in the Bond role, which is potentially stifling because its own popularity has so rigidly defined it. Read full review

Not as witty as The Living Daylights, but it doesn't let the audience down in the arena of effects, gadgetry, and locations. Read full review

For all its clever updatings, stylish action and witty escapism, Licence to Kill is still a little too much by the book. Mr. Dalton is perfectly at home as an angry Bond, and as a romantic lead and as an action hero, but he never seems to blend any two of those qualities at once. Read full review

Hardcore Bond fans may be dismayed by some of the changes, but no one can deny that the action scenes staged by director John Glen are some of the most spectacular of the entire series and well worth the price of admission. Read full review

James Bond might as well be any of a dozen movie cops. For whatever reason, writers Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum have given us a hero without the suavity, the urbanity, the sophistication of the James Bond who set these particular movies apart. And when Bond is just another hero, the result is just another action movie. It's sometimes exciting, but it misses all the lovely touches that previous films in the series have provided. [14 July 1989, p.3E]

Like "The Living Daylights", Licence to Kill definitely has its moments. But also like "The Living Daylights", the new, two-hour-plus picture goes on too long and is encumbered by a needlessly complicated plot. Read full review

He may look the part, but Timothy Dalton fails the boots, the scuba gear, or the automobiles left him by Moore and Connery. Read full review

Drab in the extreme. Timothy Dalton's second and wheezing, final turn as 007 was barely recognizable as a Bond film. Read full review

Can't find it in your vast collection of Fleming first editions? Not to worry. Seems the producers - a.k.a. the Cubby Broccoli Cottage Industry - have run plumb out of titles. And everything else too. [14 July 1989]

It's time to find a new Bond. This one is tuckered out, spent, his signature tuxedo in sore need of pressing...Dalton plays a straight-faced, humorless, no-nonsense Bond -- all guns and no play -- and it makes for a very dull time. Read full review

The Bond women are pallid mannequins, and so is the misused Dalton -- a moving target in a Savile Row suit. For every plausible reason, he looks as bored in his second Bond film as Sean Connery did in his sixth. Read full review