I was half-way through this Bond before I was pleased to realize that hadn't seen this one before! I found it entertaining,.. although I think Dalton isn't nearly as 'Bondish' as Connery or Craig. The climactic tanker chase was amazing. Blowing things up for real is so much more fun than CGI !!

Dalton is my favourite Bond, narrowly edging out Craig. He has a rougher, darker sensibility to his performance than his predecessor Roger Moore, more believable as one of those rough men who does what needs to be done so most people can sleep soundly at night. This one is a revenge story, with Bond going rogue without authorization to avenge an attack on a friend and his wife. It brings Q (the always wonderful Desmond Llewelyn) out into the field in a story about taking down a drug lord and his operation, and features an early performance by Benicio Del Toro as a crazed henchman. Carey Lowell is a Bond girl who's a match for Bond in her own stubborness. The movie's not quite as good to me as The Living Daylights, but still, Dalton was much, much better than the farce Moore subjected the character to in some of his films.

So so and overlong, but watchable. Benicio del Toro stole the show, but it was fun to see Q in the field. The tanker trucks chase finale looked good, but for the most part the stunts were very low key.

Licence to Kill, released in 1989, is the sixteenth entry in the James Bond film series, and the first one not to use the title of an Ian Fleming novel. It marks Timothy Dalton's second and final performance in his brief tenure in the lead role of James Bond. Personally, I like Sean Connery and Roger Moore more than Timothy Dalton as James Bond simply because Dalton looks more suitable for a bit of villain like Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre." I enjoyed the climactic tanker chase most of all the scenes. The producers used an entire section of a highway near Mexicali, which had been closed for safety reasons. Sixteen eighteen-wheeler tankers were used. The driving stunts are fascinating and thrilling.

The second Dalton film, and the first specifically written with his harder, more realistic approach in mind. Yet, oddly, a tad more akin to Roger Moore's era when it comes to presenting the scale of the villain's lair and operation. Here we see the influence of the late-'80s and "Miami Vice" especially with cocaine, South American gangsters, and lots of pastel-coloured shirts. Ew. At the time, this seemed very much as if Bond was returning to his roots: revenge, face-to-face fisticuffs, a modicum of gadgetry, and some solid field work with brains as the engine driving the agent to his goal. In retrospect, everything seems a bit too 'fancy', with the Religious operation used as a cover story for the bad guy being a bit too much. Adding in the Alex P. Keaton-esque business manager is the step too far. Then we get the Kenworth doing wheelies, and a fully loaded tanker truck leaning over on its port-side wheels without the liquid in the trailer pulling the whole thing over on the ground, and it's all very much gone. Still, quite a grand story, and it's good to see Bond agilely running around and punching people, instead of sneaking about setting fuses or charming his way into a control room to merely push a button or cut the ever-important blue wire. Both Bond Girls™ are good, even if the bad guy's girlfriend is actually a bit "am-dram" in her acting. Both characters are written well, though, especially the informant of Felix Leiter: Pam Bouvier. Not only an able field operative, she down-right forces Bond to take seriously the idea that women are not merely things which provide a distraction from the mission and/or provide complications in a crisis. Were the lady from "A View to a Kill" to show up with Ms Bouvier in the room, no doubt the helpless screamer of Bond's name would be slapped, knocked unconscious, then stuffed in a trunk for someone else to worry about; all before 007 had even noticed she had arrived. There's a certain harness and 'no holds barred' to the villain, and Bond's all-consuming drive to right the wrong of the assault on Leighter and his wife on their wedding night is just the right balance to that. Probably this is the better Dalton film, but there are things to be said for the other's worth as well.