The Living Daylights (1987), Directed by John Glen

Let’s Blame DeeDee for Any Misunderstanding The Living Daylights (1987), Directed by John Glen By Fearless Young Orphan For my friend Max, who convinced me to give it a try. Damn it. Double damn it. Double dog damn it. I’m starting to doubt my own sanity. You kids must realize that The Living Daylights is the first Bond film chronologically in the series that I have actually seen before, from beginning to end. I saw this, was positive that I had not liked it, and never took the time to watch any of the earlier ones until now. I’ve said it before: I’d seen bits of the older Bonds, just moments caught now and again on television, all of which were unappealing at best. What I have learned over the past six months of this Bond project is that Bond films cannot be appreciated in segments. Segments are often ridiculous, nonsensical. There is a context that must be understood. I theorize that Bond movies, rather like the movies of famed director John Ford, are better experienced as a group. Now, let’s not get tangled up in the finger-pointing of classic film enthusiasts who would probably burn me at the stake for saying such a thing about the almighty John Ford, but I’m not going to lie about this. I did not find Ford’s films to be anything extraordinary until I had watched about six of them; then a sense of cohesion began to take place in my mind, making the whole of his work seem greater than the sum of its parts. Get your torches ready, snotty film-fans, and pile up that firewood, because Bond movies do the very same double dog damned thing. I’m not flying off on a tangent about John Ford films because of all the meds I’m on, either. (And brother, I’m on a lot of meds, yay!) I’m trying to rationalize an admission that I have to make now and which is going to have a lot of my friends snickering at me: The Living Daylights was a good movie. Timothy Dalton is a perfectly good Bond. What I remembered about this film was almost completely cockeyed. But far be it from me to accept responsibility, so let’s blame DeeDee. DeeDee is the nickname of my very good friend who took me along to see the release of The Living Daylights way back in 1987. DeeDee was a Bond fan. And when I say she was a Bond fan, I mean she was a Sean Connery fan. And when I say she was a Sean Connery fan, I mean she was a slavering lust-monster-ridden fangirl stalker of Sean Connery, and all you’d have to do is say his name and she’d get flushed and squirmy. He has that effect on some women, no? Well, DeeDee and I went to The Living Daylights, and even though the film’s promotional engine had never promised her that Sean Connery would be making an appearance—they were in fact quite clear that Timothy Dalton was starring— she still seemed enraged by the absence of her love-monkey. She had nothing nice to say about this movie, about Dalton’s performance, about the interpretation of Bond in the film, and she gave me a lengthy lecture how the downfall of Western Civilization had begun on the day that Connery stopped playing Bond. I was stuck on the outskirts of this tirade, with this unhelpful attitude: I really didn’t care. At the time, I was so uninterested in the state of Bond affairs that it didn’t matter to me if freaking Kermit the Frog was playing Bond. I thought the movies were stupid, a well-informed decision I made having seen at least fifteen entire minutes cobbled together over my lifetime from bits I’d caught on television. Come twenty-plus years down the road and my recollection of The Living Daylights was that it was boring and that Timothy Dalton had no charisma in the part. I was remembering something else, warped courtesy of DeeDee. First of all, the movie was directed by John Glen, who has been impressing the hell out of me with his action movie directing skills, and even if Dalton wasn’t setting the screen on fire, the surrounding film was quite gloriously action-packed and exciting. But second, what Timothy Dalton was doing was correct. In my opinion, much of DeeDee’s problem was that she believed these actors were all playing the same James Bond. Those of you who believe this have no idea how much easier it is to love these movies if you subscribe to the cipher-agent theory, as I do (and in spite of occasional evidence to the contrary—evidence is for juries, not for movie fans). If you believe that James Bond is a job-title that is given to whatever agent is filling the 007 role at the time, these movies all start making a hell of a lot more sense and you don’t have to engage in that innate prejudice against seeing a new face playing a character that you admire. In spite of this prancing picture, I’m still going to call him “The Bruiser.” Timothy Dalton stalks in here, replacing Roger Moore, who had been dubbed by yours truly as Percy De Winter IV, Lord Hampstershire. Dalton is no lord of the manor. He’s probably, technically, the most handsome Bond so far. He’s got those freakishly chiseled features and the icy blue eyes, he’s quite a bit younger, he’s swarthy and angry-looking, and he allows himself to get frustrated, impatient, and disillusioned. Connery’s Bond was so cocky, Moore’s Bond was so easy-going, and even Lazenby, the most like Dalton by default, was really too chipper and too much in love to evoke this kind of irate determination. What shall we call this new Bond? He’s only going to be around for a couple pictures, and I don’t think he’s going to be a happy camper for either one, so we’ll call him the Bruiser. This is a guy who thought he wanted to be a 00 agent until he got the job, and now he realizes that the politics and the orders are rubbing him the wrong way. He thought he was going to be fighting for his country, but what his country is asking him to do feels wrong. That’s actually the conflict that gives rise to our plot, which for a Bond movie, is actually rather intriguing and believable, and seems to serve more of a purpose than the usual just-get-Bond-to-the-next-cool-moment scripting. In the last gasping moments of the Cold War, Bond is called to assist defector General Koskov (Jeroen Krabbe), a high-ranking official in the KGB. He does assist in pipelining (literally) Koskov to Austria, yet in the meantime he disobeys a direct order. Koskov warned MI:6 that a sniper would be after him; Bond was ordered to kill the sniper. However, the sniper is an exquisitely beautiful woman, played by exquisitely beautiful Maryam d’Abo, and Bond won’t kill her. He shoots the gun out of her hand, nothing more. We think it’s because she’s hot, but Bond actually is convincing when he says that he didn’t kill her because she obviously wasn’t a professional. She is Kara Milovy, a talented young cellist, not a trained assassin. Something is weird about this. When Bond gets Koskov to England and the man is debriefed, Koskov tells MI:6 that USSR General Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies) is planning on assassinating a number of 00 agents. Bond is ordered to assassinate Pushkin. Something is weird about this too: Bond knows Pushkin and doesn’t think the man would do something like this. So Bond sets off on the mission under his own terms. He grabs Kara Milovy—whom he discovers was actually Koskov’s girlfriend—and takes her to Tangiers, where he waits with her hoping to get information out of her. Pushkin is in town for a peace conference. There is a strange Russian assassin, who looks more like a cyborg than a real human, lurking about and garroting. And before you can say, “Serious movie,” Joe Don Baker (Mitchell!) shows up as an egomaniacal arms dealer, and Bond is hanging out of the back of a plane with a bomb about to explode. Normally this is when I say that the plot doesn’t really matter; however in this case, it does matter. I’m not going to relay it point for point for an entirely different reason: I don’t want to spoil it. I mean that. If you dismissed this one long ago, or if you can only remember the goofy parts, give it another shot. You might be surprised at what an unusually tight story it is. Sure, there is a time when Kara and Bond sled down a mountainside in a cello case (John Glen does love the skiing scenes, doesn’t he?) but that cannot be the silliest thing you have ever seen James Bond do. Personally I was impressed by the politically confused climate: The USSR is the enemy but Bond, like many of the rest of us, was coming to realize that a few distinct troublemakers do not a nation make. The enemy is more vague than a label; our enemies are those who would use our fears to force us into stupid decisions.

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