4. Licence To Kill: A Fish Winks
Although his two movie reign was overlooked at the time, we can see in Timothy Dalton's Bond the seeds of the current, phenomenally successful iteration of the franchise. The second, and more controversial, of the films, Licence to Kill sees Bond resign from the secret service and pursue a personal vendetta against a Latin American drug lord, Sanchez. This 007 is closer to Ian Fleming's conception, a dark anti-hero with a streak of brute cunning about him, and to this day it's the bloodiest, sweariest Bond film. If you're not into that, though, don't worry. The film has a wonderful surprise waiting for you in its last minute. For most of the film Bond has been working alongside DEA agent Pam Bouvier, but his plot against Sanchez required him to enlist the services of Lupe, the drug lord's resentful kept woman. By the end of the film, Bond has defeated Sanchez and joins his friends at the dead man's palatial mansion for a pool party (which is a little strange, considering the film starts at a pool party that culminates with Felix Leiter's wife being raped and murdered by Sanchez's henchmen). The happy occasion is nearly marred by the love triangle between Bond, Lupe and Pam, but Bond defuses the tension by arbitrarily choosing Pam and jumping into the pool with her. Pam, conveniently remembering the playful banter they had at the end of the first act, says "Why don't you wait until you're asked?" Bond replies "Then why don't you ask me?" They kiss, and some prime 80s R&B balladry kicks in on the soundtrack. But it's not over yet! Behind Bond and Pam for this whole sequence, there's been a massive ornamental fish, which somehow, incredibly, closes one of its eyes in a cheeky wink at you, the humble film-goer! Amazing! What a magical way to end a film that, in the course of its running time, featured a man having his heart cut out, a woman whipped with a manta ray, a man's head exploding, another man being impaled on a forklift truck, Q in a sombrero, and a man burning to death in the middle of the Mexican desert! If only there was a massive ornamental fish winking at us in every film! Imagine how much better it would've made Anti-Christ! To be honest, I quite like the fish, but only because it's some welcome cheese after a grim slog of a film. Actual money and time were spent on a shot that lasts seconds and looks utterly, utterly stupid. In that sense, it is classically Bondian, the sort of pointless sight gag the Roger Moore films were built on. It makes me wonder how genuine the film-makers were in their efforts to 'grit up' the franchise. Bond wearing a pastel suit while jumping about on some tanker trucks was a pretty naked play for the Lethal Weapon crowd, and one that didn't work- Licence to Kill was one of the least commercially successful Bond movies, and precipitated a hiatus that went on for six years. If you look at it that way, the winking fish isn't the embarrassing tonal shift- it's the rest of the film that sits wrongly.