People are too harsh on Dalton. Remember, he saved the series from the drek left over by Roger Moore's silly smirk-Bonds. And THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is distinguished as the last Bond film to be backed up by a powerhouse John Barry score.
I agree the film's weakness lies in its triple-threat villains, but there's more than enough to recommend it. The fight between Bond and Necros on the Hercules is a series highlight. As for Dalton, he not only shed the bufoonery left behind by Moore, but he set the stage for the coming of the Brosnan Bonds, so Dalton was definitely a step in the right direction.
I can not believe this, but I'm going to have to agree with taity on this.
Is that really so shocking! And I think we both agreed that Thunderball was overly long.
Meanwhile...when I rewatched Casino Royale I sort of thought to myself - Dalton's dipiction of an older MI6 agent was pretty cool. He had disdain for his job, was cynical, ignored the rules. I sort of can picture Craig's Bond turning in to this if he stayed in the job for too long.
Harry Palmer Somewhere in the past ...Posts: 325MI6 Agent
People are too harsh on Dalton. Remember, he saved the series from the drek left over by Roger Moore's silly smirk-Bonds. And THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is distinguished as the last Bond film to be backed up by a powerhouse John Barry score.
I agree the film's weakness lies in its triple-threat villains, but there's more than enough to recommend it. The fight between Bond and Necros on the Hercules is a series highlight. As for Dalton, he not only shed the bufoonery left behind by Moore, but he set the stage for the coming of the Brosnan Bonds, so Dalton was definitely a step in the right direction.
Hear hear. This gets my nomination for best post of the month.
I watched this movie last night as I was somewhat at a loose end due to a throat infection. I was surprised how good I thought it was. I'm aware I've posted here before about the movie, but it's always worth revising what you thought. This is, if you like, my most recent assessment, or re-assessmant...
The Living Daylights has never been one of my particular favourites and I still think it’s too long and too confusing – certainly on first viewing – but it has a lot of positives that are easily overlooked by the casual viewer.
The outstanding aspect of the film is Timothy Dalton, who is a new laconic James Bond for the new era of cinema hard men. His impact starts before we even reach the credits. Dalton’s gun barrel walk is possibly the best of the series so far, controlled, smooth and sharp. During the pre-title teaser, Dalton says nothing. We don’t need to be introduced to this James Bond: we know who he is by his actions and his demeanour. Dalton is so much fitter than his immediate predecessor and is able to perform more of the physical stuff, which gives an edge to these action sequences. Excellently photographed, the teaser is a parachute jump-come-truck bourn fight and we already sense Dalton’s Bond has ruthlessness and cunning in abundance. No smart off hand one liners here. Faced with a colleague’s death, he exacts revenge in the only way he knows. Not content with having dispatched the assassin, he even manages to stay an hour for some fun with a beautiful, bored playgirl. Stealing the girl’s phone he says “She’ll call you back,” before accepting a glass of champagne and introducing himself with cinema’s most famous greeting. This feels like the thunderous, exotic, luxurious, dangerous James Bond of the sixties, before gadgets and girls became two-a-penny and too easy.
Later, Bond has to assassinate Leonid Pushkin, head of the KGB, and Bond chooses to do it in a suitably nefarious manner. Infiltrating his mistress’ hotel boudoir, Bond strips her, ensuring a startled Pushkin is unprepared for his attack. He repeats the procedure to even greater effect when the security guard suspects foul play. Dalton is rough. His comments are cutting. His delivery is harsh. I like this portrait of Bond; it has some of Connery about it, but this episode is a notch far above Connery’s cool killing of Professor Dent. Bond wants answers before he kills. Quite prepared to fulfill the contract, he places Pushkin into the classic repose, on his knees, back turned, and his eyes blaze with anger, from the death of a double ‘0’, from the death of Saunders, to the manipulation of an innocent, the reopening of old wounds buried through détente. The audience actually thinks he’s going to finish the job and we’re momentarily horrified, because we know (unlike with Dent in Dr No, or Orlov in Octopussy) that Pushkin is one of the good guys.
The ruse constructed around Pushkin’s death shows that this Bond is quite prepared to countermand his orders if necessary. He seems to set greater stall by Pushkin than M. This 007 is uncomfortable among his superiors, who he clearly doesn’t rate highly. The scene in M’s office where he accepts the assignment to kill Pushkin confirms this; Dalton looks disdainful and disbelieving at M’s pronouncement. It is only the Admiral’s ire-some threat to discipline him that forces Bond to take the hit.
Dalton’s Bond still has some playful banter with Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, and the scenes in Q branch are two of the better structured efforts of the franchise. Dalton’s performance here is all charm and twinkling eyes. He’s in on the joke, but you sense the regard Bond has for the Armourer; even when making quips he appears to be paying attention, something that couldn’t be said of Connery in Thunerball.
Dalton’s respect for his superiors isn’t completely absent. During Koskov’s debriefing he is noticeably silent, sitting at a distance smoking endless cigarettes, until his input is required. His dealings with Saunders of Station V, a superior but really a pen pusher, also display a brusque terseness. That Saunders is something of an ingénue in the killing game doesn’t ease their relationship. Bond accepts his role in their initial meeting with obvious reluctance. The two men have several spiky conversations that encapsulate and then reverse their roles as master and servant. Dalton is firm in his delivery during these scenes, recognizing that Saunders, played with just the right amount of conceit by Thomas Wheatley, needs a strong hand to guide him.
There is also a central love story to The Living Daylights which Dalton needs to carry off effectively, and which he does to splendid effect in the Bratislava and Vienna sequences. I like Dalton here. His manner is calm. Bond clearly feels something for Kara very early on for, despite his genuine concerns, they return to the Conservatoire for her cello. His display of annoyance at this unscheduled stop over is reminiscent of a late and irritated husband whose wife has forgotten her holiday passport. Later in Vienna, we can’t tell if Dalton is faking or really falling in love, and neither can Kara, so she submits to his sincere romantic enticements. The ménage of shots at the Prata Park don’t seem to be as daft as I remember them; they show the relationship blossom. We actually see James Bond smile and laugh. Kara Milovy responds in kind.
Much of the credit for sustaining the love story has to go to Maryam D’Abo, who is equally adept at running a full gamut of emotions: from the wild-eyed innocence of youth to the despair of betrayal, the pain of separation to the joy of new love, the fear and the relief, confusion to realization. She even succeeds in being remarkably still and unaffected when Koskov finally meets her in Tangiers, which makes this scene particularly tangible: the solid, formal welcome offered by the Russian has none of Bond’s warmth. Fidgety nervous when attempting to poison to Bond, Kara finally sees the antithesis between the two men in her life and it shocks her static.
That the love story peters out a little during the routine smash and bang stuff in Afghanistan is hardly the actors’ fault. The script is less interesting here and gives them very little to do. D’Abo especially is saddled with a series of “Oh James…” style lines which are impossible for her to negotiate without appearing to be a hopeless bimbo, which she isn’t. She shows great awareness of her circumstances and, while taken in by Bond, she comes to understand the world he – and now she – must inhabit and chooses to switch sides. The plot lets her down in the latter stages as she’s expected to ride horses, fight Russians and pilot Star-lifter aeroplanes. I prefer her when she was simply a cellist.
Here, some credit must go to the location spotters who found a series of low key, but evocative, places for Bond and Kara to inhabit. I’m quite familiar with modern Bratislava and it’s amazing to think the scenes here were actually filmed in Vienna; it genuinely looks like the real thing. While the Conservatoire building obviously isn’t the real thing, its positioning is very similar to the Slovak National Theatre on Hviezdoslavovo nam, hemmed in on two sides by municipal buildings and fronted by an elongated city square. Kara’s one room apartment is the sort of thing you find all over the old Soviet Bloc. The rattling trams, packed full, and the absence of traffic on the back streets was also very similar. The Tatra Mountains don’t actually straddle the borders of the two countries, but they are certainly very beautiful and snowy in winter time, and the Austrian Alps are a fine substitute. I like the everyday touch of Bond hitching a lift on a farmer’s wagon to get to Vienna, but once there the magic of the city overwhelms Kara, who is enchanted by the renaissance buildings, the horse carriages and the beautiful clothes. The Ferris wheel of course brings to mind The Third Man and its heritage. While the seduction scene here is a bit mawkish, it fits in with Kara’s naïve outlook, caught up as she is in the whirl of the decadent west.
And what of everyone else? Well, sadly, the bad guys in this movie are a rotten trio and serve only to propel the narrative forward. They are one dimensional character’s and there’s barely a memorable moment to share among them. Joe Don Baker’s Brad Whittaker has massive potential, but is underused, spending all his time isolated at his Moroccan fortress. Baker at least tries to make his villain palpably real. He’s indignant when confronted with his discredited military background, angry with his colleagues when their convoluted plot starts to unravel, boastful of man’s great war-heroes. “Butchers,” says Leonid Pushkin with a scowl; “Surgeons,” replies Whittaker, and Baker captures Whittaker’s essence with this single line, his expression is wonderfully flat, candid, we can almost read what’s in Whittaker’s thoughts. Sadly, this early insight is all but lost by the time James Bond confronts him playing mechanical war games. Their gun battle and his death have all the cack-handedness of the latter days of Roger Moore and should really have been re-thought.
Meanwhile Andreas Wisniewski’s Necros is visually impressive, but lacks any depth. A hit man out of the Red Grant mould, he is a mimic, an assassin and, in his own [unnamed] country, a freedom fighter. The one brief reference to the arms his comrades need seems inserted purely to give him motive. It would have been far simpler to keep him as Brad Whittaker’s well trained stooge – which is effectively what he is. Necros has a few neat tricks up his sleeve a la Q-Branch, but as the movie progresses he forgoes these in favour of more routine fisticuffs. The main problem with Necros is that the writers build him up into a superhuman type figure, an asexual beast, a wicked impersonator, a ruthless killer, a destructor par excellence as he strolls majestically around the Bladen safe house tossing incendiary devices at his pursuers. But The Living Daylights doesn’t really need this kind of henchman. It’s an excuse by Messers Maibaum and Wilson to inject the fantastic into a tale that is essentially very earthy.
Jeroen Krabbe’s Koskov is equally ill-fitting. Behaving like some overgrown orangutan, hugging, kissing, chortling and overbearing in his actions, I wasn’t convinced by him at all. It’s a very hammy performance from Krabbe, whose best moment is the affore mentioned scene with D’Abo in Tangiers. It’s a tiny moment. A little more restraint would have gone a lot further. It still irks me that this buffoon of a man is allowed to survive a head on collision with an aircraft simply to provide a moment of light relief at the end of movie.
Indeed The Living Daylights is spoilt by lacings of obvious humour. The prime offence is probably the car chase which while enjoyable is full of all the worst aspects of Bond tom foolery which we’ve witnessed over the years. One of the redeeming aspects of the chase is how straight Dalton and D’Abo play it. D’Abo, particularly, shows shock and exhilaration as lorries are blown up and cars cut in half. It’s reminiscent of Tania Mallet’s spirited expressions during the Aston Martin pursuit in Goldfinger. Dalton equally plays it with just the right amount of knowing, but they are helpless to prevent the chase descending to cartoon level as they ski away in a cello case. This sort of visual humour doesn’t always work in 007 movies, and The Living Daylights has a few particularly poor examples.
There is a short scene on a hospital plane when Koskov explains to Bond how he’s going to wheedle his worm-like way out of a very tight situation. The byplay between the two actors is good and ends with Bond suggesting Koskov is full of bull, which is quite funny, but we don’t need to see Kara’s face beaming an appreciative smile. We know there’s a joke, don’t tell us. Worse, Julie T. Wallace’s security guard is employed purely to distract the chief engineer with her buxom chest. This sets a low tone. I remember laughing uneasily when I first saw it over twenty years ago; I don’t laugh now. There isn’t any need for the scene to take place; it’s a lazy misogynist joke on the part of the writers and takes all the tension out of Bond’s predicament. Similarly Necros is patted down when entering the safe house grounds. His jovial “watch it mate” is entirely unnecessary and cracks the suspense. The episodes with Kamran Shah in Afghanistan seem to be played almost entirely for laughs, which is slightly disconcerting given the seriousness of the Afghan conflict.
Odd then, that the most recognizably realistic scene comes during the Afghan sojourn, as Bond and Kara are escorted to the Mujahidin’s district headquarters. They are travelling through a devastated village and Bond notes the horrors of war, corpses by the roadside and the survivors struggling to clear their crumbling homes. The Mujahidin simply walk through the chaos as if it is an everyday occurrence. Kara, the innocent, is suitably shocked. James Bond has rarely been so genuine.
Despite this brief reality check, it’s the final third of the film which more than anything harks back to the immediate Roger Moore era, with its plethora of characters, silly situations and endless finales, resolved with a quick quip or two. The airborne finale is suitable tense and spectacular, but we’ve seen quite a lot of this recently – parachute jumps, fights on top of biplanes, fights on cable cars, rock climbing, fights on bridges or hanging off hot air balloons – so it perhaps loses some of its potential through repetition. Yet somehow the climax seems to hold together.
Some mention however must go to the director, John Glen, who seems to be getting back to basics. The film has a similar ambience to that of the earliest spy thrillers, not just James Bond, but those Hitchcockian thrillers of the forties and fifties. So 007 using a public toilet to inspect Kara’s cello case or finding a high powered rifle hidden under a single bed blanket seem well in keeping with the original character of James Bond, who of course was bred in the ‘40s and ‘50s. While the screenwriters don’t exactly utilize the full template of Ian Fleming’s short story The Living Daylights, there is some of the world weariness of that opus about the goings on here. Fleming was reflecting on the tiredness of his secret agent, the film seems to be suggesting the Cold War is running tired. They weren’t far wrong.
Glen and his cameraman Alec Mills play it fairly straight. There aren’t any visual surprises here, but they frame their shots well, and the European sequences especially look gorgeously bright, despite the dour circumstances. The stuff in England could be from a completely different film, being washed out and bleak, as if life in Blighty is even worse than that behind the Iron Curtain. It would be hard to make Tangier not look hot. There’s a particularly fine long shot of Bond escaping over the rooftops of the city which brings all those early spy movies back to mind. Morocco also provides a suitable replacement for Afghanistan.
The editing could be swifter; the film does seem to drag towards the end at exactly the point it should be picking up, but this is more a fault of the writers, whose complicated plot needs several viewings to decipher it. The costumes are sleek and simple; the set design understated; the special effects adequate. There’s not a lot really wrong with the production values, which hold up very well to scrutiny. The odd lapse with blue screen technology and day for night shooting (did anyone else notice the brief daytime shot during Bond’s assault on Whittaker’s residence?) don’t hinder the flow of the movie.
Lastly, I want to mention John Barry’s music, not because it’s one of my favorites [it isn’t] but because after a few lean years, the maestro returned for a last hurrah and bade farewell with a superb incidental score which adds much to the tale we see on screen. While he’s lumbered with a dumbed down ‘A View to a Kill’ in Aha’s main title theme, Barry overcomes this with a theme of his own, ‘If There Was A Man’, which he utilizes through the film to excellent effect. This central love theme has a wistful sweep of strings that evokes Kara’s own musical prodigy. During the action, Barry is restrained, letting the violence tell its own story and only adding his accompaniment to benefit the highest points. He trusts the action to hold the audience and doesn’t allow his music to overpower what we watch. David Arnold should take note.
The films epilogue finds Kara a concert success but alone amongst friends. The writers overdo this scene, which is the sort of congratulatory group participation I expect from bad television shows not James Bond. Much better is her martini infused kiss with our new hero, who claims “I wouldn’t miss this performance.” We rather believe Timothy Dalton, and I wonder if he’s talking about himself, because ultimately, it’s his fine premier turn as 007 which brings The Living Daylights alive and hauls Ian Fleming’s cinematic hero out of his 1980s doldrums.
The film isn’t a complete success, but it comes across as more rounded and believable than some of the madcap escapades of the past. There are no lasers and space bound hi-jinks, no power crazed world dominating villains, few daft stunts and a general shunning of gadgets. These can only be plus points. The producers claim James Bond will return, although they apparently ran out of titles as early as 1987, and I can only believe Dalton’s interpretation must have seemed a very safe pair of hands to leave James Bond in back in the day. It certainly looks it now.
Excellent post. I agree with your summary entirely. Dalton's portrayal of Bond in The Living Daylights was nothing short of exemplary. One who is familiar with Fleming's Bond will know once the movie starts that Dalton's Bond is Fleming's Bond. Shame about the villains ...
I watched this movie last night as I was somewhat at a loose end due to a throat infection. I was surprised how good I thought it was. I'm aware I've posted here before about the movie, but it's always worth revising what you thought. This is, if you like, my most recent assessment, or re-assessmant...
The Living Daylights has never been one of my particular favourites and I still think it’s too long and too confusing – certainly on first viewing – but it has a lot of positives that are easily overlooked by the casual viewer.
The outstanding aspect of the film is Timothy Dalton, who is a new laconic James Bond for the new era of cinema hard men. His impact starts before we even reach the credits. Dalton’s gun barrel walk is possibly the best of the series so far, controlled, smooth and sharp. During the pre-title teaser, Dalton says nothing. We don’t need to be introduced to this James Bond: we know who he is by his actions and his demeanour. Dalton is so much fitter than his immediate predecessor and is able to perform more of the physical stuff, which gives an edge to these action sequences. Excellently photographed, the teaser is a parachute jump-come-truck bourn fight and we already sense Dalton’s Bond has ruthlessness and cunning in abundance. No smart off hand one liners here. Faced with a colleague’s death, he exacts revenge in the only way he knows. Not content with having dispatched the assassin, he even manages to stay an hour for some fun with a beautiful, bored playgirl. Stealing the girl’s phone he says “She’ll call you back,” before accepting a glass of champagne and introducing himself with cinema’s most famous greeting. This feels like the thunderous, exotic, luxurious, dangerous James Bond of the sixties, before gadgets and girls became two-a-penny and too easy.
Later, Bond has to assassinate Leonid Pushkin, head of the KGB, and Bond chooses to do it in a suitably nefarious manner. Infiltrating his mistress’ hotel boudoir, Bond strips her, ensuring a startled Pushkin is unprepared for his attack. He repeats the procedure to even greater effect when the security guard suspects foul play. Dalton is rough. His comments are cutting. His delivery is harsh. I like this portrait of Bond; it has some of Connery about it, but this episode is a notch far above Connery’s cool killing of Professor Dent. Bond wants answers before he kills. Quite prepared to fulfill the contract, he places Pushkin into the classic repose, on his knees, back turned, and his eyes blaze with anger, from the death of a double ‘0’, from the death of Saunders, to the manipulation of an innocent, the reopening of old wounds buried through détente. The audience actually thinks he’s going to finish the job and we’re momentarily horrified, because we know (unlike with Dent in Dr No, or Orlov in Octopussy) that Pushkin is one of the good guys.
The ruse constructed around Pushkin’s death shows that this Bond is quite prepared to countermand his orders if necessary. He seems to set greater stall by Pushkin than M. This 007 is uncomfortable among his superiors, who he clearly doesn’t rate highly. The scene in M’s office where he accepts the assignment to kill Pushkin confirms this; Dalton looks disdainful and disbelieving at M’s pronouncement. It is only the Admiral’s ire-some threat to discipline him that forces Bond to take the hit.
Dalton’s Bond still has some playful banter with Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, and the scenes in Q branch are two of the better structured efforts of the franchise. Dalton’s performance here is all charm and twinkling eyes. He’s in on the joke, but you sense the regard Bond has for the Armourer; even when making quips he appears to be paying attention, something that couldn’t be said of Connery in Thunerball.
Dalton’s respect for his superiors isn’t completely absent. During Koskov’s debriefing he is noticeably silent, sitting at a distance smoking endless cigarettes, until his input is required. His dealings with Saunders of Station V, a superior but really a pen pusher, also display a brusque terseness. That Saunders is something of an ingénue in the killing game doesn’t ease their relationship. Bond accepts his role in their initial meeting with obvious reluctance. The two men have several spiky conversations that encapsulate and then reverse their roles as master and servant. Dalton is firm in his delivery during these scenes, recognizing that Saunders, played with just the right amount of conceit by Thomas Wheatley, needs a strong hand to guide him.
There is also a central love story to The Living Daylights which Dalton needs to carry off effectively, and which he does to splendid effect in the Bratislava and Vienna sequences. I like Dalton here. His manner is calm. Bond clearly feels something for Kara very early on for, despite his genuine concerns, they return to the Conservatoire for her cello. His display of annoyance at this unscheduled stop over is reminiscent of a late and irritated husband whose wife has forgotten her holiday passport. Later in Vienna, we can’t tell if Dalton is faking or really falling in love, and neither can Kara, so she submits to his sincere romantic enticements. The ménage of shots at the Prata Park don’t seem to be as daft as I remember them; they show the relationship blossom. We actually see James Bond smile and laugh. Kara Milovy responds in kind.
Much of the credit for sustaining the love story has to go to Maryam D’Abo, who is equally adept at running a full gamut of emotions: from the wild-eyed innocence of youth to the despair of betrayal, the pain of separation to the joy of new love, the fear and the relief, confusion to realization. She even succeeds in being remarkably still and unaffected when Koskov finally meets her in Tangiers, which makes this scene particularly tangible: the solid, formal welcome offered by the Russian has none of Bond’s warmth. Fidgety nervous when attempting to poison to Bond, Kara finally sees the antithesis between the two men in her life and it shocks her static.
That the love story peters out a little during the routine smash and bang stuff in Afghanistan is hardly the actors’ fault. The script is less interesting here and gives them very little to do. D’Abo especially is saddled with a series of “Oh James…” style lines which are impossible for her to negotiate without appearing to be a hopeless bimbo, which she isn’t. She shows great awareness of her circumstances and, while taken in by Bond, she comes to understand the world he – and now she – must inhabit and chooses to switch sides. The plot lets her down in the latter stages as she’s expected to ride horses, fight Russians and pilot Star-lifter aeroplanes. I prefer her when she was simply a cellist.
Here, some credit must go to the location spotters who found a series of low key, but evocative, places for Bond and Kara to inhabit. I’m quite familiar with modern Bratislava and it’s amazing to think the scenes here were actually filmed in Vienna; it genuinely looks like the real thing. While the Conservatoire building obviously isn’t the real thing, its positioning is very similar to the Slovak National Theatre on Hviezdoslavovo nam, hemmed in on two sides by municipal buildings and fronted by an elongated city square. Kara’s one room apartment is the sort of thing you find all over the old Soviet Bloc. The rattling trams, packed full, and the absence of traffic on the back streets was also very similar. The Tatra Mountains don’t actually straddle the borders of the two countries, but they are certainly very beautiful and snowy in winter time, and the Austrian Alps are a fine substitute. I like the everyday touch of Bond hitching a lift on a farmer’s wagon to get to Vienna, but once there the magic of the city overwhelms Kara, who is enchanted by the renaissance buildings, the horse carriages and the beautiful clothes. The Ferris wheel of course brings to mind The Third Man and its heritage. While the seduction scene here is a bit mawkish, it fits in with Kara’s naïve outlook, caught up as she is in the whirl of the decadent west.
And what of everyone else? Well, sadly, the bad guys in this movie are a rotten trio and serve only to propel the narrative forward. They are one dimensional character’s and there’s barely a memorable moment to share among them. Joe Don Baker’s Brad Whittaker has massive potential, but is underused, spending all his time isolated at his Moroccan fortress. Baker at least tries to make his villain palpably real. He’s indignant when confronted with his discredited military background, angry with his colleagues when their convoluted plot starts to unravel, boastful of man’s great war-heroes. “Butchers,” says Leonid Pushkin with a scowl; “Surgeons,” replies Whittaker, and Baker captures Whittaker’s essence with this single line, his expression is wonderfully flat, candid, we can almost read what’s in Whittaker’s thoughts. Sadly, this early insight is all but lost by the time James Bond confronts him playing mechanical war games. Their gun battle and his death have all the cack-handedness of the latter days of Roger Moore and should really have been re-thought.
Meanwhile Andreas Wisniewski’s Necros is visually impressive, but lacks any depth. A hit man out of the Red Grant mould, he is a mimic, an assassin and, in his own [unnamed] country, a freedom fighter. The one brief reference to the arms his comrades need seems inserted purely to give him motive. It would have been far simpler to keep him as Brad Whittaker’s well trained stooge – which is effectively what he is. Necros has a few neat tricks up his sleeve a la Q-Branch, but as the movie progresses he forgoes these in favour of more routine fisticuffs. The main problem with Necros is that the writers build him up into a superhuman type figure, an asexual beast, a wicked impersonator, a ruthless killer, a destructor par excellence as he strolls majestically around the Bladen safe house tossing incendiary devices at his pursuers. But The Living Daylights doesn’t really need this kind of henchman. It’s an excuse by Messers Maibaum and Wilson to inject the fantastic into a tale that is essentially very earthy.
Jeroen Krabbe’s Koskov is equally ill-fitting. Behaving like some overgrown orangutan, hugging, kissing, chortling and overbearing in his actions, I wasn’t convinced by him at all. It’s a very hammy performance from Krabbe, whose best moment is the affore mentioned scene with D’Abo in Tangiers. It’s a tiny moment. A little more restraint would have gone a lot further. It still irks me that this buffoon of a man is allowed to survive a head on collision with an aircraft simply to provide a moment of light relief at the end of movie.
Indeed The Living Daylights is spoilt by lacings of obvious humour. The prime offence is probably the car chase which while enjoyable is full of all the worst aspects of Bond tom foolery which we’ve witnessed over the years. One of the redeeming aspects of the chase is how straight Dalton and D’Abo play it. D’Abo, particularly, shows shock and exhilaration as lorries are blown up and cars cut in half. It’s reminiscent of Tania Mallet’s spirited expressions during the Aston Martin pursuit in Goldfinger. Dalton equally plays it with just the right amount of knowing, but they are helpless to prevent the chase descending to cartoon level as they ski away in a cello case. This sort of visual humour doesn’t always work in 007 movies, and The Living Daylights has a few particularly poor examples.
There is a short scene on a hospital plane when Koskov explains to Bond how he’s going to wheedle his worm-like way out of a very tight situation. The byplay between the two actors is good and ends with Bond suggesting Koskov is full of bull, which is quite funny, but we don’t need to see Kara’s face beaming an appreciative smile. We know there’s a joke, don’t tell us. Worse, Julie T. Wallace’s security guard is employed purely to distract the chief engineer with her buxom chest. This sets a low tone. I remember laughing uneasily when I first saw it over twenty years ago; I don’t laugh now. There isn’t any need for the scene to take place; it’s a lazy misogynist joke on the part of the writers and takes all the tension out of Bond’s predicament. Similarly Necros is patted down when entering the safe house grounds. His jovial “watch it mate” is entirely unnecessary and cracks the suspense. The episodes with Kamran Shah in Afghanistan seem to be played almost entirely for laughs, which is slightly disconcerting given the seriousness of the Afghan conflict.
Odd then, that the most recognizably realistic scene comes during the Afghan sojourn, as Bond and Kara are escorted to the Mujahidin’s district headquarters. They are travelling through a devastated village and Bond notes the horrors of war, corpses by the roadside and the survivors struggling to clear their crumbling homes. The Mujahidin simply walk through the chaos as if it is an everyday occurrence. Kara, the innocent, is suitably shocked. James Bond has rarely been so genuine.
Despite this brief reality check, it’s the final third of the film which more than anything harks back to the immediate Roger Moore era, with its plethora of characters, silly situations and endless finales, resolved with a quick quip or two. The airborne finale is suitable tense and spectacular, but we’ve seen quite a lot of this recently – parachute jumps, fights on top of biplanes, fights on cable cars, rock climbing, fights on bridges or hanging off hot air balloons – so it perhaps loses some of its potential through repetition. Yet somehow the climax seems to hold together.
Some mention however must go to the director, John Glen, who seems to be getting back to basics. The film has a similar ambience to that of the earliest spy thrillers, not just James Bond, but those Hitchcockian thrillers of the forties and fifties. So 007 using a public toilet to inspect Kara’s cello case or finding a high powered rifle hidden under a single bed blanket seem well in keeping with the original character of James Bond, who of course was bred in the ‘40s and ‘50s. While the screenwriters don’t exactly utilize the full template of Ian Fleming’s short story The Living Daylights, there is some of the world weariness of that opus about the goings on here. Fleming was reflecting on the tiredness of his secret agent, the film seems to be suggesting the Cold War is running tired. They weren’t far wrong.
Glen and his cameraman Alec Mills play it fairly straight. There aren’t any visual surprises here, but they frame their shots well, and the European sequences especially look gorgeously bright, despite the dour circumstances. The stuff in England could be from a completely different film, being washed out and bleak, as if life in Blighty is even worse than that behind the Iron Curtain. It would be hard to make Tangier not look hot. There’s a particularly fine long shot of Bond escaping over the rooftops of the city which brings all those early spy movies back to mind. Morocco also provides a suitable replacement for Afghanistan.
The editing could be swifter; the film does seem to drag towards the end at exactly the point it should be picking up, but this is more a fault of the writers, whose complicated plot needs several viewings to decipher it. The costumes are sleek and simple; the set design understated; the special effects adequate. There’s not a lot really wrong with the production values, which hold up very well to scrutiny. The odd lapse with blue screen technology and day for night shooting (did anyone else notice the brief daytime shot during Bond’s assault on Whittaker’s residence?) don’t hinder the flow of the movie.
Lastly, I want to mention John Barry’s music, not because it’s one of my favorites [it isn’t] but because after a few lean years, the maestro returned for a last hurrah and bade farewell with a superb incidental score which adds much to the tale we see on screen. While he’s lumbered with a dumbed down ‘A View to a Kill’ in Aha’s main title theme, Barry overcomes this with a theme of his own, ‘If There Was A Man’, which he utilizes through the film to excellent effect. This central love theme has a wistful sweep of strings that evokes Kara’s own musical prodigy. During the action, Barry is restrained, letting the violence tell its own story and only adding his accompaniment to benefit the highest points. He trusts the action to hold the audience and doesn’t allow his music to overpower what we watch. David Arnold should take note.
The films epilogue finds Kara a concert success but alone amongst friends. The writers overdo this scene, which is the sort of congratulatory group participation I expect from bad television shows not James Bond. Much better is her martini infused kiss with our new hero, who claims “I wouldn’t miss this performance.” We rather believe Timothy Dalton, and I wonder if he’s talking about himself, because ultimately, it’s his fine premier turn as 007 which brings The Living Daylights alive and hauls Ian Fleming’s cinematic hero out of his 1980s doldrums.
The film isn’t a complete success, but it comes across as more rounded and believable than some of the madcap escapades of the past. There are no lasers and space bound hi-jinks, no power crazed world dominating villains, few daft stunts and a general shunning of gadgets. These can only be plus points. The producers claim James Bond will return, although they apparently ran out of titles as early as 1987, and I can only believe Dalton’s interpretation must have seemed a very safe pair of hands to leave James Bond in back in the day. It certainly looks it now.
One who is familiar with Fleming's Bond will know once the movie starts that Dalton's Bond is Fleming's Bond. Shame about the villains ...
I am more than familiar with Fleming's Bond and Dalton has never reminded of him. At all.
Having said that, TLD is the 'good' Dalton film to me....but I've never been able to sum up exactly why. I think it's because it does manage to tread the line between literary and cinematic Bond, and quite well. As said before the first 30 or so minutes are excellent, and I do like the more complicated than average plot - nice way to tie in SMERSH as well. I even like Jeroen Krabbe's Koskov in a weird 'I'd love to punch him through the TV' sort of way.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,927Chief of Staff
Dalton's scene with Saunders, lifted from the titular short story, expressed the undercurrent of cynicism Bond had with his profession that Bond had in the novels - a certain self-loathing that caused him to be perhaps a bit too-self destructive at times. To my memory this has not been touched upon otherwise in the films (at least not overtly; Craig's Bond is certainly cynical and self-destructive, but he doesn't seem to blame the profession itself for it outright - he's just been through some rotten stuff. Though it's fair enough to infer that the job is why, he hasn't expressed 'a problem' with his profession openly).
Of course, as usual the literary story is superior. In the movie, Bond chooses to wound rather than kill the female sniper because he observes that 'she doesn't know one end of a rifle from the other' and that 'he only kills professionals'.
However, in the original story, it had nothing to do with proficiency - he had been watching the (unnamed) cellist leave the music hall for days with the other musicians, and fell into a sort of one-sided love affair with said cellist. He even felt offended by the obscenity of such a pretty girl splaying a large cello between her legs:
"There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle."
That sentence is loaded with information on his feelings. In his mind, he cares about her on more than one level - a sexual one, obviously, given the imagery; and a protective level, wishing to spare her the indecency of having a savage, masculine cello between her thighs. A reconciliation, or perhaps a marriage, between raw sexual attraction and a sense of chivalry, and his instinctive sense to protect the girl. (In reality, Amaryllis Fleming, the inspiration for the character, was Ian Fleming's sister - so naturally he's a bit protective).
Of course, as it turned out, she was no amateur, but indeed a real, trained Soviet sniper; yet he couldn't bring himself to kill her. Like the other great short stories (Quantum of Solace, Octopussy, The Hildebrand Rarity) , it demonstrated his (arguably) 'flawed' human side. A man in Bond's profession doesn't get to pick and choose his targets based on whether he thinks they're 'professionals' or not - a job is a job, and his job was to kill that sniper. In the book, he disobeyed his orders based on his emotions, and the horror of killing a pretty girl that he had fancied over the course of the assignment. And, in the deep bitterness he tasted on the assignment, he was willing to tell off Saunders (Sanders in the story) that he was more than happy to stuff his Double-0 rather than perform his duty. The story here is that while Bond is a ruthless, trained killer, he has a line he won't cross, a standard, and would rather deny his duty to his profession than cross it. It's one of my favorite Bond stories for that reason - it elucidates why Bond is someone interesting, perhaps admirable; rather than most flippant cheap action-story antiheroes that leave a trail of bodies with no regrets. Fleming's Bond was a man struggling with his sense of humanity, beginning with Casino Royale - with Bond's hand-wringing over the nature of good and evil.
In the movie, Bond claims that he chose not to make the kill-shot because he 'only kills professionals'. This falls short as an excuse - his job is to kill that sniper. MI6 certainly didn't care about the proficiency level of the sniper assigned to execute the fleeing defector. Bond doesn't really have a choice in this matter. For all he knows, that clumsy girl that doesn't seem to know how to use a rifle could still be horribly EVIL - her skill with a rifle doesn't make her an innocent. He can claim to Saunders that he's willing to sacrifice his job for this standard, but I contest that MI6 never would have conferred 00 status upon him if he expressed such rather haughty 'standards' before, and certainly, if he tried to claim 'professional pride' for not killing a target, he'd be laughed out of the Service. In the book, it was genuine human weakness - affection and attraction - that spared the sniper's life. Damnable, tortuous, and forgivable, and I think that tells a much better story.
That said... the movie is still one of the better ones for even touching upon the subject, even if it may have missed the mark in the storytelling sense.
Dalton's scene with Saunders, lifted from the titular short story, expressed the undercurrent of cynicism Bond had with his profession that Bond had in the novels - a certain self-loathing that caused him to be perhaps a bit too-self destructive at times. To my memory this has not been touched upon otherwise in the films (at least not overtly; Craig's Bond is certainly cynical and self-destructive, but he doesn't seem to blame the profession itself for it outright - he's just been through some rotten stuff. Though it's fair enough to infer that the job is why, he hasn't expressed 'a problem' with his profession openly).
Of course, as usual the literary story is superior. In the movie, Bond chooses to wound rather than kill the female sniper because he observes that 'she doesn't know one end of a rifle from the other' and that 'he only kills professionals'.
However, in the original story, it had nothing to do with proficiency - he had been watching the (unnamed) cellist leave the music hall for days with the other musicians, and fell into a sort of one-sided love affair with said cellist. He even felt offended by the obscenity of such a pretty girl splaying a large cello between her legs:
"There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle."
That sentence is loaded with information on his feelings. In his mind, he cares about her on more than one level - a sexual one, obviously, given the imagery; and a protective level, wishing to spare her the indecency of having a savage, masculine cello between her thighs. A reconciliation, or perhaps a marriage, between raw sexual attraction and a sense of chivalry, and his instinctive sense to protect the girl. (In reality, Amaryllis Fleming, the inspiration for the character, was Ian Fleming's sister - so naturally he's a bit protective).
Of course, as it turned out, she was no amateur, but indeed a real, trained Soviet sniper; yet he couldn't bring himself to kill her. Like the other great short stories (Quantum of Solace, Octopussy, The Hildebrand Rarity) , it demonstrated his (arguably) 'flawed' human side. A man in Bond's profession doesn't get to pick and choose his targets based on whether he thinks they're 'professionals' or not - a job is a job, and his job was to kill that sniper. In the book, he disobeyed his orders based on his emotions, and the horror of killing a pretty girl that he had fancied over the course of the assignment. And, in the deep bitterness he tasted on the assignment, he was willing to tell off Saunders (Sanders in the story) that he was more than happy to stuff his Double-0 rather than perform his duty. The story here is that while Bond is a ruthless, trained killer, he has a line he won't cross, a standard, and would rather deny his duty to his profession than cross it. It's one of my favorite Bond stories for that reason - it elucidates why Bond is someone interesting, perhaps admirable; rather than most flippant cheap action-story antiheroes that leave a trail of bodies with no regrets. Fleming's Bond was a man struggling with his sense of humanity, beginning with Casino Royale - with Bond's hand-wringing over the nature of good and evil.
In the movie, Bond claims that he chose not to make the kill-shot because he 'only kills professionals'. This falls short as an excuse - his job is to kill that sniper. MI6 certainly didn't care about the proficiency level of the sniper assigned to execute the fleeing defector. Bond doesn't really have a choice in this matter. For all he knows, that clumsy girl that doesn't seem to know how to use a rifle could still be horribly EVIL - her skill with a rifle doesn't make her an innocent. He can claim to Saunders that he's willing to sacrifice his job for this standard, but I contest that MI6 never would have conferred 00 status upon him if he expressed such rather haughty 'standards' before, and certainly, if he tried to claim 'professional pride' for not killing a target, he'd be laughed out of the Service. In the book, it was genuine human weakness - affection and attraction - that spared the sniper's life. Damnable, tortuous, and forgivable, and I think that tells a much better story.
That said... the movie is still one of the better ones for even touching upon the subject, even if it may have missed the mark in the storytelling sense.
While I wouldn't necessarily dispute your point - and in my review I never once suggested the film was superior to the short story or vice versa - I think it's worth mentioning that the story as we see it on film doesn't really work if Bond is falling in love with Kara from the outset. Obviously he knows she's attractive because he sees her in the Conservatoire, but there's no suggestion of any emotional involvement at this point.
What is worth bearing in mind is 007's instincts are pricked early on by Saunders remark that "Koskov specifically requested you... He thinks you are the best." So Bond is already wondering why it had to be the top marksman, why it had to be him, who aided the defection. Why he sees the cellist, it is quite obvious from Kara's position on the window ledge that she is a novice with a gun, sitting there like some western outrider when she should be hidden, cowled, tripod and infrared scope in use; Bond is agasht at the amateurism of it.
When 007 escorts Koskov out of Bratislava and again when he attends the debriefing, have you noticed how off-hand, how sceptical Dalton's Bond seems about the whole affair? This isn't bad acting; it's spot on acting. Bond is uncertain about Koskov's motives. That's why he's chasing after the female "assassin" - who turns out to be nothing of the sort.
MI6 may take away his licence to kill, but they'd lose a damn fine agent, because he makes the correct split second decision. A lesser agent would have eliminated the assassin and cut off the one possible lead to Koskov's deception.
N>B> I thoroughly adore Fleming's The Living Daylights. It's probably my favourite of his short stories and the criticism you give of it above (not the movie) is exceptional.
Dalton's scene with Saunders, lifted from the titular short story, expressed the undercurrent of cynicism Bond had with his profession that Bond had in the novels - a certain self-loathing that caused him to be perhaps a bit too-self destructive at times. To my memory this has not been touched upon otherwise in the films (at least not overtly; Craig's Bond is certainly cynical and self-destructive, but he doesn't seem to blame the profession itself for it outright - he's just been through some rotten stuff. Though it's fair enough to infer that the job is why, he hasn't expressed 'a problem' with his profession openly).
Of course, as usual the literary story is superior. In the movie, Bond chooses to wound rather than kill the female sniper because he observes that 'she doesn't know one end of a rifle from the other' and that 'he only kills professionals'.
However, in the original story, it had nothing to do with proficiency - he had been watching the (unnamed) cellist leave the music hall for days with the other musicians, and fell into a sort of one-sided love affair with said cellist. He even felt offended by the obscenity of such a pretty girl splaying a large cello between her legs:
"There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle."
That sentence is loaded with information on his feelings. In his mind, he cares about her on more than one level - a sexual one, obviously, given the imagery; and a protective level, wishing to spare her the indecency of having a savage, masculine cello between her thighs. A reconciliation, or perhaps a marriage, between raw sexual attraction and a sense of chivalry, and his instinctive sense to protect the girl. (In reality, Amaryllis Fleming, the inspiration for the character, was Ian Fleming's sister - so naturally he's a bit protective).
Of course, as it turned out, she was no amateur, but indeed a real, trained Soviet sniper; yet he couldn't bring himself to kill her. Like the other great short stories (Quantum of Solace, Octopussy, The Hildebrand Rarity) , it demonstrated his (arguably) 'flawed' human side. A man in Bond's profession doesn't get to pick and choose his targets based on whether he thinks they're 'professionals' or not - a job is a job, and his job was to kill that sniper. In the book, he disobeyed his orders based on his emotions, and the horror of killing a pretty girl that he had fancied over the course of the assignment. And, in the deep bitterness he tasted on the assignment, he was willing to tell off Saunders (Sanders in the story) that he was more than happy to stuff his Double-0 rather than perform his duty. The story here is that while Bond is a ruthless, trained killer, he has a line he won't cross, a standard, and would rather deny his duty to his profession than cross it. It's one of my favorite Bond stories for that reason - it elucidates why Bond is someone interesting, perhaps admirable; rather than most flippant cheap action-story antiheroes that leave a trail of bodies with no regrets. Fleming's Bond was a man struggling with his sense of humanity, beginning with Casino Royale - with Bond's hand-wringing over the nature of good and evil.
In the movie, Bond claims that he chose not to make the kill-shot because he 'only kills professionals'. This falls short as an excuse - his job is to kill that sniper. MI6 certainly didn't care about the proficiency level of the sniper assigned to execute the fleeing defector. Bond doesn't really have a choice in this matter. For all he knows, that clumsy girl that doesn't seem to know how to use a rifle could still be horribly EVIL - her skill with a rifle doesn't make her an innocent. He can claim to Saunders that he's willing to sacrifice his job for this standard, but I contest that MI6 never would have conferred 00 status upon him if he expressed such rather haughty 'standards' before, and certainly, if he tried to claim 'professional pride' for not killing a target, he'd be laughed out of the Service. In the book, it was genuine human weakness - affection and attraction - that spared the sniper's life. Damnable, tortuous, and forgivable, and I think that tells a much better story.
That said... the movie is still one of the better ones for even touching upon the subject, even if it may have missed the mark in the storytelling sense.
While I wouldn't necessarily dispute your point - and in my review I never once suggested the film was superior to the short story or vice versa - I think it's worth mentioning that the story as we see it on film doesn't really work if Bond is falling in love with Kara from the outset. Obviously he knows she's attractive because he sees her in the Conservatoire, but there's no suggestion of any emotional involvement at this point.
What is worth bearing in mind is 007's instincts are pricked early on by Saunders remark that "Koskov specifically requested you... He thinks you are the best." So Bond is already wondering why it had to be the top marksman, why it had to be him, who aided the defection. Why he sees the cellist, it is quite obvious from Kara's position on the window ledge that she is a novice with a gun, sitting there like some western outrider when she should be hidden, cowled, tripod and infrared scope in use; Bond is agasht at the amateurism of it.
When 007 escorts Koskov out of Bratislava and again when he attends the debriefing, have you noticed how off-hand, how sceptical Dalton's Bond seems about the whole affair? This isn't bad acting; it's spot on acting. Bond is uncertain about Koskov's motives. That's why he's chasing after the female "assassin" - who turns out to be nothing of the sort.
MI6 may take away his licence to kill, but they'd lose a damn fine agent, because he makes the correct split second decision. A lesser agent would have eliminated the assassin and cut off the one possible lead to Koskov's deception.
N>B> I thoroughly adore Fleming's The Living Daylights. It's probably my favourite of his short stories and the criticism you give of it above (not the movie) is exceptional.
I do agree with you that the changes were necessary to the movie's plot. I much prefer the literary version due to its twinge of sadness, but that hardly could have served as the segue into a two-hour movie, I suppose.
Thanks for your criticism of my criticism. It's probably my favorite, too, though 'The Hildebrand Rarity' and 'Quantum of Solace' are serious contenders.
Edit: In the end, I suppose his reasons for not killing the sniper don't matter so much, as far as the mission is concerned: the objective was to get the defector out of the country alive, and despite Bond's disobedience, the objective was attained. Still, the book's premise was a powerful one, and it's the sort of thing I'd like to see in the films.
Of course, if Fleming had gone for a real tragedy, Bond would've killed the woman he fancied, and the story would end in a very dark place, with Bond very drunk and very alone, mentally torturing himself by weighing his Puritan streak against the services he carries out for Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Another reason for the change is that this is Dalton's debut, maybe they didn't want him to seem flaky ie fluffing his move out of emotional 'weakness'.
I don't like the way he seems to be conning Kara, acting like he's Yogi's friend; we're not sure if he's fallen in love or not at this point and the director doesn't make this clear. To be honest, I just didn't feel I knew what was going on the first couple of times I saw this, a more charismatic actor like Mel Gibson (as he was then) could have put it better across imo. Odd how also Lazenby and Moore's debut involves an element of deception with the ladies which also leaves a bit of a bad taste, they're pretending to be something they're not. So did Connery but of course Miss Tao or whoever it was is a bad lass so it's fun in that instance.
Comments
I agree the film's weakness lies in its triple-threat villains, but there's more than enough to recommend it. The fight between Bond and Necros on the Hercules is a series highlight. As for Dalton, he not only shed the bufoonery left behind by Moore, but he set the stage for the coming of the Brosnan Bonds, so Dalton was definitely a step in the right direction.
Is that really so shocking! And I think we both agreed that Thunderball was overly long.
Meanwhile...when I rewatched Casino Royale I sort of thought to myself - Dalton's dipiction of an older MI6 agent was pretty cool. He had disdain for his job, was cynical, ignored the rules. I sort of can picture Craig's Bond turning in to this if he stayed in the job for too long.
Hear hear. This gets my nomination for best post of the month.
The Living Daylights has never been one of my particular favourites and I still think it’s too long and too confusing – certainly on first viewing – but it has a lot of positives that are easily overlooked by the casual viewer.
The outstanding aspect of the film is Timothy Dalton, who is a new laconic James Bond for the new era of cinema hard men. His impact starts before we even reach the credits. Dalton’s gun barrel walk is possibly the best of the series so far, controlled, smooth and sharp. During the pre-title teaser, Dalton says nothing. We don’t need to be introduced to this James Bond: we know who he is by his actions and his demeanour. Dalton is so much fitter than his immediate predecessor and is able to perform more of the physical stuff, which gives an edge to these action sequences. Excellently photographed, the teaser is a parachute jump-come-truck bourn fight and we already sense Dalton’s Bond has ruthlessness and cunning in abundance. No smart off hand one liners here. Faced with a colleague’s death, he exacts revenge in the only way he knows. Not content with having dispatched the assassin, he even manages to stay an hour for some fun with a beautiful, bored playgirl. Stealing the girl’s phone he says “She’ll call you back,” before accepting a glass of champagne and introducing himself with cinema’s most famous greeting. This feels like the thunderous, exotic, luxurious, dangerous James Bond of the sixties, before gadgets and girls became two-a-penny and too easy.
Later, Bond has to assassinate Leonid Pushkin, head of the KGB, and Bond chooses to do it in a suitably nefarious manner. Infiltrating his mistress’ hotel boudoir, Bond strips her, ensuring a startled Pushkin is unprepared for his attack. He repeats the procedure to even greater effect when the security guard suspects foul play. Dalton is rough. His comments are cutting. His delivery is harsh. I like this portrait of Bond; it has some of Connery about it, but this episode is a notch far above Connery’s cool killing of Professor Dent. Bond wants answers before he kills. Quite prepared to fulfill the contract, he places Pushkin into the classic repose, on his knees, back turned, and his eyes blaze with anger, from the death of a double ‘0’, from the death of Saunders, to the manipulation of an innocent, the reopening of old wounds buried through détente. The audience actually thinks he’s going to finish the job and we’re momentarily horrified, because we know (unlike with Dent in Dr No, or Orlov in Octopussy) that Pushkin is one of the good guys.
The ruse constructed around Pushkin’s death shows that this Bond is quite prepared to countermand his orders if necessary. He seems to set greater stall by Pushkin than M. This 007 is uncomfortable among his superiors, who he clearly doesn’t rate highly. The scene in M’s office where he accepts the assignment to kill Pushkin confirms this; Dalton looks disdainful and disbelieving at M’s pronouncement. It is only the Admiral’s ire-some threat to discipline him that forces Bond to take the hit.
Dalton’s Bond still has some playful banter with Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, and the scenes in Q branch are two of the better structured efforts of the franchise. Dalton’s performance here is all charm and twinkling eyes. He’s in on the joke, but you sense the regard Bond has for the Armourer; even when making quips he appears to be paying attention, something that couldn’t be said of Connery in Thunerball.
Dalton’s respect for his superiors isn’t completely absent. During Koskov’s debriefing he is noticeably silent, sitting at a distance smoking endless cigarettes, until his input is required. His dealings with Saunders of Station V, a superior but really a pen pusher, also display a brusque terseness. That Saunders is something of an ingénue in the killing game doesn’t ease their relationship. Bond accepts his role in their initial meeting with obvious reluctance. The two men have several spiky conversations that encapsulate and then reverse their roles as master and servant. Dalton is firm in his delivery during these scenes, recognizing that Saunders, played with just the right amount of conceit by Thomas Wheatley, needs a strong hand to guide him.
There is also a central love story to The Living Daylights which Dalton needs to carry off effectively, and which he does to splendid effect in the Bratislava and Vienna sequences. I like Dalton here. His manner is calm. Bond clearly feels something for Kara very early on for, despite his genuine concerns, they return to the Conservatoire for her cello. His display of annoyance at this unscheduled stop over is reminiscent of a late and irritated husband whose wife has forgotten her holiday passport. Later in Vienna, we can’t tell if Dalton is faking or really falling in love, and neither can Kara, so she submits to his sincere romantic enticements. The ménage of shots at the Prata Park don’t seem to be as daft as I remember them; they show the relationship blossom. We actually see James Bond smile and laugh. Kara Milovy responds in kind.
Much of the credit for sustaining the love story has to go to Maryam D’Abo, who is equally adept at running a full gamut of emotions: from the wild-eyed innocence of youth to the despair of betrayal, the pain of separation to the joy of new love, the fear and the relief, confusion to realization. She even succeeds in being remarkably still and unaffected when Koskov finally meets her in Tangiers, which makes this scene particularly tangible: the solid, formal welcome offered by the Russian has none of Bond’s warmth. Fidgety nervous when attempting to poison to Bond, Kara finally sees the antithesis between the two men in her life and it shocks her static.
That the love story peters out a little during the routine smash and bang stuff in Afghanistan is hardly the actors’ fault. The script is less interesting here and gives them very little to do. D’Abo especially is saddled with a series of “Oh James…” style lines which are impossible for her to negotiate without appearing to be a hopeless bimbo, which she isn’t. She shows great awareness of her circumstances and, while taken in by Bond, she comes to understand the world he – and now she – must inhabit and chooses to switch sides. The plot lets her down in the latter stages as she’s expected to ride horses, fight Russians and pilot Star-lifter aeroplanes. I prefer her when she was simply a cellist.
Here, some credit must go to the location spotters who found a series of low key, but evocative, places for Bond and Kara to inhabit. I’m quite familiar with modern Bratislava and it’s amazing to think the scenes here were actually filmed in Vienna; it genuinely looks like the real thing. While the Conservatoire building obviously isn’t the real thing, its positioning is very similar to the Slovak National Theatre on Hviezdoslavovo nam, hemmed in on two sides by municipal buildings and fronted by an elongated city square. Kara’s one room apartment is the sort of thing you find all over the old Soviet Bloc. The rattling trams, packed full, and the absence of traffic on the back streets was also very similar. The Tatra Mountains don’t actually straddle the borders of the two countries, but they are certainly very beautiful and snowy in winter time, and the Austrian Alps are a fine substitute. I like the everyday touch of Bond hitching a lift on a farmer’s wagon to get to Vienna, but once there the magic of the city overwhelms Kara, who is enchanted by the renaissance buildings, the horse carriages and the beautiful clothes. The Ferris wheel of course brings to mind The Third Man and its heritage. While the seduction scene here is a bit mawkish, it fits in with Kara’s naïve outlook, caught up as she is in the whirl of the decadent west.
And what of everyone else? Well, sadly, the bad guys in this movie are a rotten trio and serve only to propel the narrative forward. They are one dimensional character’s and there’s barely a memorable moment to share among them. Joe Don Baker’s Brad Whittaker has massive potential, but is underused, spending all his time isolated at his Moroccan fortress. Baker at least tries to make his villain palpably real. He’s indignant when confronted with his discredited military background, angry with his colleagues when their convoluted plot starts to unravel, boastful of man’s great war-heroes. “Butchers,” says Leonid Pushkin with a scowl; “Surgeons,” replies Whittaker, and Baker captures Whittaker’s essence with this single line, his expression is wonderfully flat, candid, we can almost read what’s in Whittaker’s thoughts. Sadly, this early insight is all but lost by the time James Bond confronts him playing mechanical war games. Their gun battle and his death have all the cack-handedness of the latter days of Roger Moore and should really have been re-thought.
Meanwhile Andreas Wisniewski’s Necros is visually impressive, but lacks any depth. A hit man out of the Red Grant mould, he is a mimic, an assassin and, in his own [unnamed] country, a freedom fighter. The one brief reference to the arms his comrades need seems inserted purely to give him motive. It would have been far simpler to keep him as Brad Whittaker’s well trained stooge – which is effectively what he is. Necros has a few neat tricks up his sleeve a la Q-Branch, but as the movie progresses he forgoes these in favour of more routine fisticuffs. The main problem with Necros is that the writers build him up into a superhuman type figure, an asexual beast, a wicked impersonator, a ruthless killer, a destructor par excellence as he strolls majestically around the Bladen safe house tossing incendiary devices at his pursuers. But The Living Daylights doesn’t really need this kind of henchman. It’s an excuse by Messers Maibaum and Wilson to inject the fantastic into a tale that is essentially very earthy.
Jeroen Krabbe’s Koskov is equally ill-fitting. Behaving like some overgrown orangutan, hugging, kissing, chortling and overbearing in his actions, I wasn’t convinced by him at all. It’s a very hammy performance from Krabbe, whose best moment is the affore mentioned scene with D’Abo in Tangiers. It’s a tiny moment. A little more restraint would have gone a lot further. It still irks me that this buffoon of a man is allowed to survive a head on collision with an aircraft simply to provide a moment of light relief at the end of movie.
Indeed The Living Daylights is spoilt by lacings of obvious humour. The prime offence is probably the car chase which while enjoyable is full of all the worst aspects of Bond tom foolery which we’ve witnessed over the years. One of the redeeming aspects of the chase is how straight Dalton and D’Abo play it. D’Abo, particularly, shows shock and exhilaration as lorries are blown up and cars cut in half. It’s reminiscent of Tania Mallet’s spirited expressions during the Aston Martin pursuit in Goldfinger. Dalton equally plays it with just the right amount of knowing, but they are helpless to prevent the chase descending to cartoon level as they ski away in a cello case. This sort of visual humour doesn’t always work in 007 movies, and The Living Daylights has a few particularly poor examples.
There is a short scene on a hospital plane when Koskov explains to Bond how he’s going to wheedle his worm-like way out of a very tight situation. The byplay between the two actors is good and ends with Bond suggesting Koskov is full of bull, which is quite funny, but we don’t need to see Kara’s face beaming an appreciative smile. We know there’s a joke, don’t tell us. Worse, Julie T. Wallace’s security guard is employed purely to distract the chief engineer with her buxom chest. This sets a low tone. I remember laughing uneasily when I first saw it over twenty years ago; I don’t laugh now. There isn’t any need for the scene to take place; it’s a lazy misogynist joke on the part of the writers and takes all the tension out of Bond’s predicament. Similarly Necros is patted down when entering the safe house grounds. His jovial “watch it mate” is entirely unnecessary and cracks the suspense. The episodes with Kamran Shah in Afghanistan seem to be played almost entirely for laughs, which is slightly disconcerting given the seriousness of the Afghan conflict.
Odd then, that the most recognizably realistic scene comes during the Afghan sojourn, as Bond and Kara are escorted to the Mujahidin’s district headquarters. They are travelling through a devastated village and Bond notes the horrors of war, corpses by the roadside and the survivors struggling to clear their crumbling homes. The Mujahidin simply walk through the chaos as if it is an everyday occurrence. Kara, the innocent, is suitably shocked. James Bond has rarely been so genuine.
Despite this brief reality check, it’s the final third of the film which more than anything harks back to the immediate Roger Moore era, with its plethora of characters, silly situations and endless finales, resolved with a quick quip or two. The airborne finale is suitable tense and spectacular, but we’ve seen quite a lot of this recently – parachute jumps, fights on top of biplanes, fights on cable cars, rock climbing, fights on bridges or hanging off hot air balloons – so it perhaps loses some of its potential through repetition. Yet somehow the climax seems to hold together.
Some mention however must go to the director, John Glen, who seems to be getting back to basics. The film has a similar ambience to that of the earliest spy thrillers, not just James Bond, but those Hitchcockian thrillers of the forties and fifties. So 007 using a public toilet to inspect Kara’s cello case or finding a high powered rifle hidden under a single bed blanket seem well in keeping with the original character of James Bond, who of course was bred in the ‘40s and ‘50s. While the screenwriters don’t exactly utilize the full template of Ian Fleming’s short story The Living Daylights, there is some of the world weariness of that opus about the goings on here. Fleming was reflecting on the tiredness of his secret agent, the film seems to be suggesting the Cold War is running tired. They weren’t far wrong.
Glen and his cameraman Alec Mills play it fairly straight. There aren’t any visual surprises here, but they frame their shots well, and the European sequences especially look gorgeously bright, despite the dour circumstances. The stuff in England could be from a completely different film, being washed out and bleak, as if life in Blighty is even worse than that behind the Iron Curtain. It would be hard to make Tangier not look hot. There’s a particularly fine long shot of Bond escaping over the rooftops of the city which brings all those early spy movies back to mind. Morocco also provides a suitable replacement for Afghanistan.
The editing could be swifter; the film does seem to drag towards the end at exactly the point it should be picking up, but this is more a fault of the writers, whose complicated plot needs several viewings to decipher it. The costumes are sleek and simple; the set design understated; the special effects adequate. There’s not a lot really wrong with the production values, which hold up very well to scrutiny. The odd lapse with blue screen technology and day for night shooting (did anyone else notice the brief daytime shot during Bond’s assault on Whittaker’s residence?) don’t hinder the flow of the movie.
Lastly, I want to mention John Barry’s music, not because it’s one of my favorites [it isn’t] but because after a few lean years, the maestro returned for a last hurrah and bade farewell with a superb incidental score which adds much to the tale we see on screen. While he’s lumbered with a dumbed down ‘A View to a Kill’ in Aha’s main title theme, Barry overcomes this with a theme of his own, ‘If There Was A Man’, which he utilizes through the film to excellent effect. This central love theme has a wistful sweep of strings that evokes Kara’s own musical prodigy. During the action, Barry is restrained, letting the violence tell its own story and only adding his accompaniment to benefit the highest points. He trusts the action to hold the audience and doesn’t allow his music to overpower what we watch. David Arnold should take note.
The films epilogue finds Kara a concert success but alone amongst friends. The writers overdo this scene, which is the sort of congratulatory group participation I expect from bad television shows not James Bond. Much better is her martini infused kiss with our new hero, who claims “I wouldn’t miss this performance.” We rather believe Timothy Dalton, and I wonder if he’s talking about himself, because ultimately, it’s his fine premier turn as 007 which brings The Living Daylights alive and hauls Ian Fleming’s cinematic hero out of his 1980s doldrums.
The film isn’t a complete success, but it comes across as more rounded and believable than some of the madcap escapades of the past. There are no lasers and space bound hi-jinks, no power crazed world dominating villains, few daft stunts and a general shunning of gadgets. These can only be plus points. The producers claim James Bond will return, although they apparently ran out of titles as early as 1987, and I can only believe Dalton’s interpretation must have seemed a very safe pair of hands to leave James Bond in back in the day. It certainly looks it now.
I am more than familiar with Fleming's Bond and Dalton has never reminded of him. At all.
Having said that, TLD is the 'good' Dalton film to me....but I've never been able to sum up exactly why. I think it's because it does manage to tread the line between literary and cinematic Bond, and quite well. As said before the first 30 or so minutes are excellent, and I do like the more complicated than average plot - nice way to tie in SMERSH as well. I even like Jeroen Krabbe's Koskov in a weird 'I'd love to punch him through the TV' sort of way.
Really ? I'm a little surprised at that....I think Dalton gets very close to Fleming's Bond...very close indeed...
Of course, as usual the literary story is superior. In the movie, Bond chooses to wound rather than kill the female sniper because he observes that 'she doesn't know one end of a rifle from the other' and that 'he only kills professionals'.
However, in the original story, it had nothing to do with proficiency - he had been watching the (unnamed) cellist leave the music hall for days with the other musicians, and fell into a sort of one-sided love affair with said cellist. He even felt offended by the obscenity of such a pretty girl splaying a large cello between her legs:
"There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle."
That sentence is loaded with information on his feelings. In his mind, he cares about her on more than one level - a sexual one, obviously, given the imagery; and a protective level, wishing to spare her the indecency of having a savage, masculine cello between her thighs. A reconciliation, or perhaps a marriage, between raw sexual attraction and a sense of chivalry, and his instinctive sense to protect the girl. (In reality, Amaryllis Fleming, the inspiration for the character, was Ian Fleming's sister - so naturally he's a bit protective).
Of course, as it turned out, she was no amateur, but indeed a real, trained Soviet sniper; yet he couldn't bring himself to kill her. Like the other great short stories (Quantum of Solace, Octopussy, The Hildebrand Rarity) , it demonstrated his (arguably) 'flawed' human side. A man in Bond's profession doesn't get to pick and choose his targets based on whether he thinks they're 'professionals' or not - a job is a job, and his job was to kill that sniper. In the book, he disobeyed his orders based on his emotions, and the horror of killing a pretty girl that he had fancied over the course of the assignment. And, in the deep bitterness he tasted on the assignment, he was willing to tell off Saunders (Sanders in the story) that he was more than happy to stuff his Double-0 rather than perform his duty. The story here is that while Bond is a ruthless, trained killer, he has a line he won't cross, a standard, and would rather deny his duty to his profession than cross it. It's one of my favorite Bond stories for that reason - it elucidates why Bond is someone interesting, perhaps admirable; rather than most flippant cheap action-story antiheroes that leave a trail of bodies with no regrets. Fleming's Bond was a man struggling with his sense of humanity, beginning with Casino Royale - with Bond's hand-wringing over the nature of good and evil.
In the movie, Bond claims that he chose not to make the kill-shot because he 'only kills professionals'. This falls short as an excuse - his job is to kill that sniper. MI6 certainly didn't care about the proficiency level of the sniper assigned to execute the fleeing defector. Bond doesn't really have a choice in this matter. For all he knows, that clumsy girl that doesn't seem to know how to use a rifle could still be horribly EVIL - her skill with a rifle doesn't make her an innocent. He can claim to Saunders that he's willing to sacrifice his job for this standard, but I contest that MI6 never would have conferred 00 status upon him if he expressed such rather haughty 'standards' before, and certainly, if he tried to claim 'professional pride' for not killing a target, he'd be laughed out of the Service. In the book, it was genuine human weakness - affection and attraction - that spared the sniper's life. Damnable, tortuous, and forgivable, and I think that tells a much better story.
That said... the movie is still one of the better ones for even touching upon the subject, even if it may have missed the mark in the storytelling sense.
There you are... The Living Daylights, better than throat infection. They should have used that on the posters.
Keep taking the tablets, ChrisNo1...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Do we have someone here who's good with Photoshop? Could work wonders with a TND poster!:))
While I wouldn't necessarily dispute your point - and in my review I never once suggested the film was superior to the short story or vice versa - I think it's worth mentioning that the story as we see it on film doesn't really work if Bond is falling in love with Kara from the outset. Obviously he knows she's attractive because he sees her in the Conservatoire, but there's no suggestion of any emotional involvement at this point.
What is worth bearing in mind is 007's instincts are pricked early on by Saunders remark that "Koskov specifically requested you... He thinks you are the best." So Bond is already wondering why it had to be the top marksman, why it had to be him, who aided the defection. Why he sees the cellist, it is quite obvious from Kara's position on the window ledge that she is a novice with a gun, sitting there like some western outrider when she should be hidden, cowled, tripod and infrared scope in use; Bond is agasht at the amateurism of it.
When 007 escorts Koskov out of Bratislava and again when he attends the debriefing, have you noticed how off-hand, how sceptical Dalton's Bond seems about the whole affair? This isn't bad acting; it's spot on acting. Bond is uncertain about Koskov's motives. That's why he's chasing after the female "assassin" - who turns out to be nothing of the sort.
MI6 may take away his licence to kill, but they'd lose a damn fine agent, because he makes the correct split second decision. A lesser agent would have eliminated the assassin and cut off the one possible lead to Koskov's deception.
N>B> I thoroughly adore Fleming's The Living Daylights. It's probably my favourite of his short stories and the criticism you give of it above (not the movie) is exceptional.
I do agree with you that the changes were necessary to the movie's plot. I much prefer the literary version due to its twinge of sadness, but that hardly could have served as the segue into a two-hour movie, I suppose.
Thanks for your criticism of my criticism.
Edit: In the end, I suppose his reasons for not killing the sniper don't matter so much, as far as the mission is concerned: the objective was to get the defector out of the country alive, and despite Bond's disobedience, the objective was attained. Still, the book's premise was a powerful one, and it's the sort of thing I'd like to see in the films.
Of course, if Fleming had gone for a real tragedy, Bond would've killed the woman he fancied, and the story would end in a very dark place, with Bond very drunk and very alone, mentally torturing himself by weighing his Puritan streak against the services he carries out for Her Majesty's Secret Service.
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I don't like the way he seems to be conning Kara, acting like he's Yogi's friend; we're not sure if he's fallen in love or not at this point and the director doesn't make this clear. To be honest, I just didn't feel I knew what was going on the first couple of times I saw this, a more charismatic actor like Mel Gibson (as he was then) could have put it better across imo. Odd how also Lazenby and Moore's debut involves an element of deception with the ladies which also leaves a bit of a bad taste, they're pretending to be something they're not. So did Connery but of course Miss Tao or whoever it was is a bad lass so it's fun in that instance.
Roger Moore 1927-2017