10 Strangest Fictitious Countries
1. Isthmus Republic - License To Kill
What's better than a cocaine hideout? A cocaine hideout with Wayne Newton.
That's where audiences wound up in Timothy Dalton's second, unfairly maligned outing as 007. Dalton's tenure as Ian Fleming's blunt instrument is finally getting the recognition it deserves thanks to the back-to-the-roots Daniel Craig reboot, but the films themselves are still viewed as outliers in the franchise.
License to Kill certainly takes Bond to some uncomfortable places, maiming series regular Felix Leiter in the film's first act by drug dealer Franz Sanchez.
It's an admittedly odd route for the franchise to take, essentially downgrading Bond to little more than a beat cop who lost his partner, but Dalton commits wholeheartedly. It's no less jarring, but certainly less embarrassing, than seeing him tortured in the opening of Die Another Day.
License to Kill gets exceptionally fun and Eighties-movie levels of ridiculous when Bond reaches the Isthmus Republic, a fictional island paradise where Sanchez is free to make all the cocaine he wants. Such a titan of the cocaine world, he has financial backers, including televangelist Wayne Newton. And henchman, like a young Benicio Del Toro.
But all great Bond villains must have an outlandish plan for world domination, and since nukes weren't the threat they once were, Sanchez had a new plan.
Sanchez, it seems, has found a way to turn cocaine into petrol and back, making it easy to transport. Honestly, that sounds like something your cocaine friend just says he can do.