12 Things You Learn Rewatching Licence To Kill
Dalton's brutal swan song delivers.
Our weekly James Bond rewatch series continues with 007's sixteenth outing, the controversial and divisive 1989 film Licence to Kill.
Timothy Dalton's second and (sadly) final effort as Bond, the film is also franchise stalwart John Glen's fifth and final time as director, ending both their tenures end on a respectable, bold movie that nevertheless has its fair share of detractors.
Above all else, Licence to Kill is definitely not a safe or lazy entry into the series: it takes some ambitious steps forward for the franchise and does things the filmmakers surely knew wouldn't go down well with all fans.
On its own merits, though, the tenaciously violent tone has a real staying power that even many superior Bond flicks actually don't. It's an interesting evolution from The Living Daylights' decidedly lighter tenor, though it's a damn shame we never got to see how this would've fed into Dalton's planned third film.
Whatever your opinion on the movie, you certainly can't call it boring or just more of the same old thing. And to that end, it sure makes for an interesting revisit three decades later...