Review – The Living Daylights

And so begins Timothy Dalton’s ill-favored tenure as Bond. To be fair, the problems here aren’t entirely his fault. He’s British. He’s handsome. He isn’t too old. The role doesn’t really require much beyond that. The real trouble is the weak script. There’s no villain to speak of, just three different guys working separate but related agendas, none of which seem likely to end life as we know it anytime soon. Ah, for the heady days of SPECTRE’s prime. The disarray in international politics left in the dying days of the Cold War are here evident in the ambiguous alliance between former Soviets and American mercenaries on one side and the English agent, his Russian defector girlfriend and a pack of heroin-smuggling Afghani freedom fighters on the other. Not as bad as License to Kill or the Moore efforts with all the comedic crap, but not Bond at his best either. See if desperate