The Living Daylights (1987)

Budget 30.0 million. Opening dates: UK June 29, 1987; US July 31, 1987

World Box Office $191.2 million

 Originally Written
Friday, January 26, 2007

Bond is back, only not better than ever! While Timothy Dalton brings a slightly new persona to the Bond franchise, everything else in this film lacks any substantial flare or burst of originality. Ultimately The Living Daylights is a replay of the past Bonds that included horrible Bond girls and even more horrible villains.

Bond is chosen to safely escort a Russian defector out of the county and into safe harbor among the British government; only problem is this defector isn't who he appears to be. The supposed Russian defector is working for an American weapons dealer who provides weapons and diamonds to the Arabs in exchange for drugs to sell in the United States. This entire ploy is to setup a certain General in high ranks for the murders of two special agents in hopes that the British government will follow a false trail and eliminate any connections that might have been made towards their weapons dealing.

This is by far the shortest Bond review I have ever done. That is due to the fact that not much happens in this film. I even had trouble thinking of any good scenes to capture for pics so enjoy Bond riding down the mountain in a cello case, which has absolutely nothing to do with this paragraph...well maybe now it does. Back to the review. The real problem is the story isn't organized very well and ultimately ends up being two hours of scattered scenes that attempt to form into a story. When it's over The Living Daylights is not the worst Bond film but there's nothing memorable about it which is probably why not many people even remember it!

Overall, The Living Daylights didn't impress me much, it had enough going for it to make it slightly entertaining, but ultimately I thought the film played out rather slowly. The story seemed to be all over the place at times, and for the first 45 minutes I wasn't quite sure what was going on. The villains were incredibly corny and unbelievable and the Bond girl was disappointing as well. In the end, the introduction, theme song and the premiere of Timothy Dalton in the role of Bond were the best parts of this outing, still it's probably one of the few Bond films that will quickly be forgotten after it's watched, because there isn't anything in this film that stands out at all.

6/10