Benicio Del Toro: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

5 Awesome Performances...

5. Dario - Licence To Kill (1989)

Only the second big screen appearance for the young del Toro, even in the role of a Bond villain henchman he managed to leave a strong impression. Licence To Kill was an anomaly at the time, a much more serious and visceral 007 flick for new star Timothy Dalton, coming after a good decade of silly, tongue-in-cheek Roger Moore films. You know have everyone was falling over themselves to praise Casino Royale for returning to the more brutal tone of the original Ian Fleming novels? Licence To Kill did that a good twenty years prior, the more serious tone and realistic violence making it the only Bond film to carry a 15 rating. Second-stringer bad guy Dario certainly played a big part in that - particularly his untimely demise at the hands of our hero. Before he got shot in the shoulder and chucked into a pulveriser in a cocaine processing plant, though, del Toro managed to make the relatively slim part all his own. Director John Glen said that the up-and-coming young actor was picked because he was "laid back while menacing in a quirky sort of way", which is a pretty accurate summation of the weirdly charming-yet-terrifying sliminess he just oozes in the Licence To Kill. And that's with having all of three lines.