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Licence To Kill (Special Edition)

Licence To Kill (Special Edition)

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: BOO-HOO! DALTON'S BOND TAKES A NOSE DIVE ON DVD
Review: Okay, let's make this one as painless as possible. Timothy Dalton is not my idea of Bond - James Bond. On the heels of Connery and Moore how could he hope to live up to expectations. Well, he didn't and as a result, only made two films as England's most revered secret agent. This time out he's chasing after a drug dealer (isn't this beneath him) and is aided by Cary Lowel (of Law & Order fame) and Las Vegas favorite (Wayne Newton) playing a high class hack peddling religion. Long story short - the script is so bad that if the film didn't have Bond it would have tanked at the box office. As it stands, it didn't exactly cut a financial swath.
MGM/UA's DVD doesn't do the film any favors. Aliasing, digital compression artifacts, fine detail shimmering and edge enhancement are all abundantly present making for an even greater disappointment of this already bad film. The sound has been mixed to 5.1 but it's a feeble mix that sounds more like a 2.0 surround than genuine Dolby Digital. Extras are plentiful and interesting. Menu design is outstanding. MGM - please!!! - more effort on the remastering of your prints. I really don't care about menu design! BOTTOM LINE: Wasn't worth it at the show. Definitely not worth it on DVD.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Close but know cigar
Review: Although he isn't my favorite (actually that is bit of an understatement) Dalton does what he can with the otherwise unoriginal plot line. The grittiness of this movie is a slight turn off. It also hurts Felix whom is one of my favorite charactors( this was taken from one of the books where the exact same thing happens when he gets mamed by a shark). All in all the all out action scenes make up for the script.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Close but know cigar
Review: Although he isn't my favorite (actually that is bit of an understatement) Dalton does what he can with the otherwise unoriginal plot line. The grittiness of this movie is a slight turn of. It also hurts Felix whom is one of my favorite charactors( this was taken from one of the books where the exact same thing happens when he gets mamed by a shark). All in all the all out action scenes make up for the script.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Last of the Eighty's Bonds.
Review: Timothy Dalton was never my most favorite Bond. He took his work too seriously and rarely are his jokes really cunning or witty. There was a certain charm missing. Nevertheless, the story line for this movie was the better of the 2 Dalton did. He battles a Columbian drug dealer manipulating people to his advantage. The action sequences were intense and absolutely some of the best sequences until Pierce stepped in. This movie is a good buy and worth the money only if you like or can tolerate Timothy's attitude.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As Fleming intended
Review: Dark, brooding and sharp. This is the chararcter Ian Fleming wrote about, yet when Roger Moore came on the scene, Bond became a cartoon hero with undeniably good hair. Is this better than the Living Daylights? Yes and no.

Plus points: Dalton first rate, probably the best action scene (truck chase), witty script and a decent villain. Negative points : poor choice of location(s) and drab girls. I love the bit where Dalton says "Don't you want to know why?" Mint!

It's great to see Bond become more of a free agent. Enjoy!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Different pace for Dalton's Bond...
Review: This surprisingly violent entry in the James Bond saga almost marked the end for 007. It begins with Bond and Felix Leiter taking out Sanchez, a drug dealer, and making it just in time for Felix's wedding. However, Sanchez gets revenge and feeds Felix to a shark and murders his wife. Angry, Bond sets out to avenge his best friend, going against orders from M and losing his license to kill. It's not very cheery and has very few comic moments. The film's biggest problem is that it wants to be taken seriously. Bond movies almost never work when they try to be serious about their situations and this movie proves this point. There are a few moments, like an extended chase scene with semis and off-road vehicles, but much of the movie is too violent to really have that Bond feel. It's a shame Timothy Dalton took a bow after this one. I'm sure his third outing would have been better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Bond movie with underserved reputation
Review: Licence to Kill is the 16th movie in the James Bond series, the 2nd and last one featuring Timmothy Dalton as 007, and the one fans and the general public usually blame for the 6-year hiatus till GoldenEye. As a result, when current Bond fans watch LTK after hearing this, it becomes easy for them to nitpick the movie and say how horrible it was. On the contrary, LTK is easily one of the strongest and most daring installments in the franchise, and should not be missed.

There are many reasons why LTK did poorly at the box office and the series was on hold for six years. 1989 had a crowded box-office, with such high-profile titles like Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, and Back to the Future II all gunning for a piece of the pie. Among such company, someone has to lose, and unfortunately it was Licence to Kill. With installments coming out on a near-regular basis since 1962, the public was beginning to take Bond forgranted (in time, this will probably happen again, either with Brosnan or his successors). They probably assumed another installment would come out in two years either way, and they were actually right. Unlike other executive producers, the Broccolis don't let the almighty dollar sign rule their decisions. The franchise had survived worse, such as the Connery/Lazenby changeover and the early Moore years, and they were all set to go ahead with Dalton's 3rd movie for 1991. However, legal issues, coupled with the death of longtime screenplay writer Richard Maibaum, kept setting the movie back. Note that Dalton could've returned for GoldenEye, but voluntarily ended his run. This is the story of LTK that is somehow always skipped over.

Licence to Kill is a great movie. While I don't think every Bond movie should be played as dark as this one, it makes for a refreshing change of pace after the Moore years. The story is simple and focused; here the smaller scope works better than in previous Bond films like "Live and Let Die." This is Bond's personal vendetta, and he's taking care of business the old-fashioned way. The villains are threatening yet charismatic; Robert Davi's Sanchez is evil by his actions, yet the viewer can't help but like the guy. Few of the villains in the Moore years (Stromberg, Drax, Kamal Kahn, Zorin) feel as human and developed as Sanchez does. The girls are gorgeous, with Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto each respectively showing the proper amounts of competence and helplessness. The action scenes are great, with Dalton doing many of his own stunts, for added tension. Besides that, Dalton also again puts everything he has into Bond, for another great performance. And finally, Q fans will love his extended role, as he goes out into the field unofficially to slip 007 some more cool gadgets. In fact, the only place where the movie slips is its final resolution; after having his wife killed and his leg ripped off, Felix Lieter looks a little too happy in his hospital bed. It's a blemish on an otherwise great movie, but it's small enough to be overlooked.

As usual, MGM has packed Licence to Kill with tons of features, including their standard (but always great) documentaries, commentaries, trailers, music videos, and other cool stuff. Seeing so many participants in the documentary is a testament to how popular the franchise is and how much fun the stars had making Licence to Kill. Hopefully the background information provided on the movie's proported box office failure will let viewers see the movie in a different light. Licence to Kill is a fresh experience, and should not be passed up.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Total Dud
Review: This film lacks all the elements that I desire in a Bond film.

Exotic locales? None here, unless you like spending the almost the entire movie in Mexico.

Bond babes? They blew it here too, not to mention that Taliso Soto is just about as bad an actress as Stacy Sutton in AVTAK.

Music score? Sounds like Lethal Weapon more than anything else, generic and uninspired and certainly not Bondian in the least.

Larger-than-life villains? They failed on this one as well with a drug lord straight out of Miami Vice and Wayne Newton (yes, THE Wayne Newton) as a cheesy religious cult leader.

A great title track? Nope. Totally bland and lifeless.

When you throw in needless brutal violence and remove all traces of humor, what's left? License to Kill.

There were two decent action sequences but they weren't nearly enough to save this bomb. License to Kill was a gigantic step down from the Living Daylights and one of the worst of the series. To say that its feeble US box office returns were because of stiff competition that summer is a copout. I saw all the others that summer. They weren't much better. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2 and Die Hard 2 shouldn't be stiff competition for the longest running film franchise in cinema history. License to Kill flopped because it stunk. End of story.

If you aren't a Bond fan you may enjoy this as an average Hollywood action piece but Miami Vice doesn't do it for me.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: We gave her a nice...honeymoooooooooon!
Review: Licence To Kill is one of those Bond films that grows on you. It cribs liberally from Fleming, which is a good thing because Fleming could be one sick puppy when he wanted to. The shark scene BTW is taken verbatim from the novel "Live and Let Die". Also note the name of that boat and its captain. They're both from the short story, "The Hildebrand Rarity". Well, audiences in 1989 were not expecting the dramatic return of the literary Bond, which Dalton tried his damndest to capture. But it's not a bad film. The pace is quick and there is more character development than in all the Moore years combined. The girls are hot, there are gadgets and Robert Davi as Sanchez is, well, he's great but I wish he was more than just a drug dealer. I mean, how do we go from guys who want to blow up the earth to honest, hard working cocaine dealers? Watch out for a young Benicio Del Toro as one of Sanchez' henchmen.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Among the worst of the Bond films.....
Review: Among all the things wrong with this movie is that Bond was portrayed as out for revenge after his friend is seriously injured by a shark attack, and then we get into a way over blown plot about 007 brining down a Drug dealer's empire with a climax that goes along very slowly and pointlessly. This was not a Bond movie, it was a Big Joke.


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