10 Henchman Movie Roles Made Epic By Casting
4. Benicio Del Toro - License To Kill
Audiences have finally come around on Timothy Dalton's tenure as 007, however the films themselves are still not beloved. While he was arguably the first Bond to bring the blunt instrument of Ian Fleming's novels to screen with any faith to the source material, his two entries stand out as, if nothing else, exceptionally weird Bond entries. The Living Daylights at least kept the action within Cold War politics.
License to Kill makes no such effort. It's more like a cop with a grudge picture than a spy movie, and it didn't ingratiate itself with loyalists when it mauled series regular Felix Leiter in the film's first act.
Nevertheless, despite its drenched-in-eighties aesthetic, it's an especially fun Bond film, never losing pace and piling on the levels of absurdity with each plot development.
The film reaches the height of crazy when it winds up on drug lord Franz Sanchez' private drug island, which has its very own Wayne Newton. Throughout his career, 007 has had a habit of collecting a vast array of character actors, from Joe Don Baker to Kill's Everett McGill, but most notable is the mostly silent Benicio Del Toro as Sanchez's mostly wordless henchman.
Del Toro famously turned his dialogue into gibberish in The Usual Suspects after realizing his character didn't add anything to the plot, and he's just as effective here, wordlessly intimidating Bond with nothing but a switchblade.
He also receives a fitting Bond death going through factory machinery.