Licence to Kill

***Licence to Kill*** is a 1989 spy action thriller film and the second film to star Timothy Dalton as James Bond. It was also the first Bond film to be released in two years after 1987's *The Living Daylights*.

## Plot

Shortly after an important drug bust, CIA agent Felix Leiter gets married, but when the drug lord he arrested escape and kills his wife and mutilates Leiter his old friend British agent James Bond seeks revenge. When "M" orders 007 to drop the matter and start a new assignment, Bond deserts Her Majesty's Secret Service and embarks on a world wide personal vendetta to kill those responsible.

## Why You Should Have Your Licence to Kill

1. Dalton's second Bond outing is even better than his first.
2. Awesome and intense action sequences.
3. Nice theme song by Gladys Knight.
4. Well done characterization.
5. Great acting, from actors like Robert Davi, Benicio Del Toro, Carey Lowell and Talia Soto, as well as Timothy Dalton.
6. The film was the first to be shot outside the UK.
7. Great cinematography.
8. Good title sequence.
9. The music score is pretty good.
10. Some of the dialogue is memorable, such as:
	* **-You could have had everything! -Don't you want to know why?.**
	* **Compliments of Sharkey.**
11. Unlike any Bond movies before and after it, this film is MUCH more brutal and scary.

## Unlicensed Qualities

1. As mentioned above, there are some VERY brutal moments.
2. Milton Krest's death might scare some viewers.
3. This film sadly ended Timothy Dalton's era of James Bond, due to it underperforming at the box office in the United States.
	* It may have done well internationally, but not good enough to give Timothy Dalton a third Bond film.

## Reception

*Licence to Kill* was commercially successful, earning $156.1 million out of a $32 million budget.

Opinion on Licence to Kill has changed with the passing of time: some reviews are still mixed, though film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes lists the film with a positive 77% rating from 53 reviews. Tom Hibbert of Empire gives the film only two of a possible five stars, observing that "Dalton ... is really quite hopeless". Hibbert concluded that "he may look the part, but Timothy Dalton fails the boots, the scuba gear, or the automobiles left him by Moore and Connery." In 2006, IGN ranked Licence to Kill fifteenth out of the then 21 Bond films, claiming it is "too grim and had strayed too far from the Bond formula." Norman Wilner of MSN considered Licence to Kill the second worst Bond film, above only A View to a Kill, but defended Dalton, saying he "got a raw deal. The actor who could have been the definitive 007 ... had the bad luck to inherit the role just as the series was at its weakest, struggling to cope with its general creative decline and the end of the Cold War". In October 2008 Time Out re-issued a review of Licence to Kill and also thought that Dalton was unfortunate, saying "one has to feel for Dalton, who was never given a fair shake by either of the films in which he appeared".

## Videos

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## External Links

* Template:IMDb
* Template:Rotten Tomatoes