Viking Night: The Living Daylights
By Bruce Hall
December 20, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I remember how weird it felt to see someone else playing James Bond. Roger Moore was the Brett Favre of Bonds, having inhabited the role as long as I’ve been alive. I also remember being excited about the idea of Pierce Brosnan taking over. Like everyone else I’d seen him on television and thought he’d be perfect.
Between RoboCop and Predator, 1987 was shaping up to be a pretty good year for me.
And then they cast Timothy Dalton, and all the talk began of a more “politically correct” Bond. There would be less emphasis on sex, no more winking and mugging, and a darker, more serious tone. All I knew is that they made the Robin Hood guy from Flash Gordon James Bond, and I wasn’t happy about it. I changed my mind when I saw the film, because winning, as they say, fixes everything.
The Living Daylights was actually a success at the time, and although a lot of people weren’t sure that to make of the new Bond, the consensus was positive. By now you know that Dalton slipped into the tuxedo only once more in 1989, and there would be no more adventures for agent 007 until 1996. This has caused many to consider Dalton the George Clooney of James Bonds, having killed a beloved franchise with an unholy infusion of ice skates and nipples.
Not true. Lawyers are what nearly killed the franchise. Dalton is not my favorite Bond, and while the controversy surrounding his interpretation of the character is valid, he’s not bad. He just inherited the role at a bad time and the stink rubbed off on him.
So yes, I came to the man’s defense this week when someone compared him to everyone’s least favorite Batman. The fact of the matter is, The Living Daylights is a pretty decent film. It’s dated, and as we’ll discuss in a minute, makes some very questionable choices all across the board. But I’ll take it over almost any of the Moore era films and let’s be honest; Brosnan was too young at the time anyway.
The Living Daylights sees Bond working to help a KGB operative defect to the West. General Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé) is scheduled to attend the symphony in a city near the border of Russian territory. Bond’s mission is to get the General across the border without being murdered. Obviously Bond is successful, but notices something off about the KGB sniper sent to stop him.
Yes, of course she’s a beautiful woman. But she also plays the cello and clearly has no idea how to use a gun. Later, Bond learns from a grateful Koskov about a KGB plot to wipe out Britain’s top agents (one of them gets knocked off in the film’s opening sequence), possibly as a prelude to something even bigger. As a result, Bond is ordered to assassinate the head of the KGB, a man named Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies). To his credit, Bond accepts the assignment without laughing.
Come on, what’s he going to do, parachute into the Kremlin, poison the man’s borscht and parachute back out? It makes no sense, but it ends up being the one of the most plausible concepts in the whole story.
To be fair, Bond actually does a mild amount of detective work over the course of the film, which is something we don’t see often. Dalton plays the character like a man who isn’t sure he wants to travel the world stabbing people for a living anymore, but knows he isn’t qualified to do anything else. I imagine in Bond’s line of work, repurposing your skills for the private sector is easier said than done.
I applaud the attempt to show us that facet of the man, and you can count me among those who think Dalton was ahead of his time. This is a guy who takes his job seriously but recognizes the toll it’s taken on him personally. So when he tracks down the mysterious sniper, he discovers her name is Kara (Maryam d'Abo), and that she’s little more than a pawn in a much larger scheme involving Koskov, Pushkin, and a guy named Brad.
That’s right. I hope this isn’t a spoiler, but the villain in this movie is a guy named “Brad”.
And he’s played by Joe Don Baker, who is a fine actor that couldn’t be more out of place here if they’d put him in a dress. While I’m on the subject, could they find no actual Russians to play Russians back then? John Rhys-Davies is also a fine actor, but the only thing more British than his name is his accent. Maryam d'Abo wins points for sounding like a Russian at least forty percent of the time, while losing them again for being the frumpiest of all Bond girls. That’s as nicely as I can put it, particularly since she and Dalton have about as much romantic chemistry as Bill and Hillary Clinton.
That explains the icy shudder I feel when Bond first leans in to kiss her, responding to her hesitation by awkwardly cooing “just let it happen”.
Probably not what they were going for. I know I said Dalton was a decent Bond, and he is. But his version of the man is so averse to humor that moments after slicing a police car in half with a laser, he mutters some nonsense about “salt corrosion”. Literally every time he has a chance to say something awesome the beat is there, but he just...doesn’t. It’s almost as though everyone else thought they were doing just another goofy Roger Moore film, while Dalton was the guy insisting everyone address him as “Commander Bond” in between takes.
And no dissection of The Living Daylights would be complete without mentioning the climactic third act, which actually includes a pretty cool action sequence involving horses and planes and explosions. But not only does it precede one the lamest deaths of the lamest Bond villains ever, it also sees Bond joining forces with the Mujahideen, Afghan “freedom fighters” who were resisting Soviet occupation at the time.
Since their rebranding, you might know them better as Al Qaeda. Yikes.
Hey, I wasn’t kidding when I called this movie “dated”. Still, The Living Daylights is a pretty solid action picture in its own right, despite that rather extensive list of flaws. It’s a pretty well paced story, the acting is better than the accents, and the action sequences are acceptable. Best of all, the extreme campiness of the Moore films was finally put to rest, never to be seen again.
Until it was.