The Living Daylights **** (1987 Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, Jeroen Krabbé) – Classic Movie Review 414

Playing it more like the James Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels, Timothy Dalton made his excellent debut as a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense Bond in John Glen’s exciting 1987 007 film. This time round, as well as a Bond movie, it’s a proper spy thriller too.

This time Bond’s mission is to organise the defection of top Soviet general Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbe). Koskov turns out to be a double-dealing Russian agent. When General Koskov is re-captured, Bond heads off to find why his ally was sent to kill him. Then Bond goes to Afghanistan to confront the evil arms dealer Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker), a ‘good ol’ boy’ megalomaniac U.S. general.

Advertised as ‘the most dangerous Bond ever’, it delvers its promise. There’s no let-up in the hard action as Bond pursues Koskov from behind the Iron Curtain to glamorous locations in Morocco, Gibraltar, Vienna, Italy, America and England. The screenplay by regular series writer Richard Maibaum and producer Michael G Wilson is dark-toned, brutal-minded and serious, putting a full stop to the camp fun of the Roger Moore movies.

The Living Daylights was popular for taking Bond back to basics, and Dalton was acclaimed in some quarters at the time as the best Bond since Sean Connery. The old guard of Desmond Llewelyn, Robert Brown and Geoffrey Keen reprise their roles as Q, M and the British Minister of Defence, but (sadly) Caroline Bliss takes over from Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.

Maryam d’Abo is the Bond girl Kara Milovy, a blackmailed Czech cellist Bond ‘couldn’t kill’, and Andreas Wisniewski is the nearly superhuman assassin Necros. Both are effective, while Joe Don Baker, John Rhys-Davies, John Terry and Art Malik also have useful roles as Brad Whitaker, General Leonid Pushkin, Felix Leiter and Kamran Shah.

The title song is composed by John Barry and Pal Waaktaar and performed by A-Ha. The band’s name is credited in the A-Ha logo font,  the only time in the series.

Maryam d’Abo was originally hired only to appear in screen tests opposite actors screen testing for the role of the new James Bond. When she was cast as Kara Milovy, Pierce Brosnan was still set to be the new James Bond. But NBC unexpectedly renewed Brosnan’s TV series Remington Steele and wouldn’t release him. Before Brosnan, Timothy Dalton had been going to star, but he couldn’t get out of his movie Brenda Starr. But the delay over re-writing the script for Brosnan gave Timothy Dalton time to complete Brenda Starr, and he began filming as Bond two days later.

In all the confusion, the end credit only promises ‘James Bond will return’. And he did, and Dalton did too, in 1989’s Licence to Kill.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 414

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