11/7/2023 0 Comments Robert davi license to kill![]() Really, it's just more of the same patently inoffensive background humming that's just exactly slow enough for a junior high dance, with the considerable benefit that the lyrics are not half so imbecilic and grating. But let's be fair, 1980s solo Gladys Knight was much more about soothing mall music than belting out soul.īonus! The end credits boast a second single, Patti LaBelle's "If You Asked Me To", which as always, we do not count towards the official score, though it wouldn't help much if it did. And, much in the tradition of the inimitable Rita Coolidge, Knight fails to do good and proper post-Shirley Bassey thing, and put a spin on the lyrics that communicates, subtly but unmistakably, "once I've shot you with my love-gun, we are going to have the most amazing, dirty sex". As in, "Got a licence to kill / And you know I'm going straight for your heart", which is quite possibly the most obvious way to incorporate the phrase "licence to kill" into a pop song, and this does not make it any more freaking cheesy. ![]() There's no beating the late-'80s/early-'90s corridor for R&B-tinged pop ballads with a ginormous orchestral flourish after the bridge, and that is exactly what we get here, married to lyrics that err rather far on the wrong side of "epically stupid". ![]() ![]() The flirtation with '80s rock acts comes to a crashing stop with Gladys Knight's rendition of "Licence to Kill", written by Narada Michael Walden, Jeffrey Cohen, and Walter Afanasieff (one doubts that the film's planned title, Licence Revoked, would have supported a theme song nearly so readily), and it is overproduced like a motherfucker. It serves a narrative purpose, and serves it well, but there's just something about it that feels "off". And this mostly unpersuasive pitched character-building makes me altogether suspicious of an opener that is otherwise exactly to order: boisterous, adventuresome, suave. The stunt, at least, is intact the rest of it is bogged down in a little bit too much exposition for my taste, and in particular, the attempt to prove how much Bond and Leiter are the bestest buddies ever is rather plainly meant to set up the whole 2+ hours of movie to follow, which requires us to have a much greater investment in the Bond/Leiter relationship than any of the American spy's six previous appearances would naturally lead us to frankly, I never got the impression until this movie that he and 007 were anything but mutually respectful colleagues. And perhaps as a result, the tone of it is remarkably unlike anything in any other Bond picture: pretty much since the very start, the pre-title sequence serves as a rousing amuse bouche, getting us riled up for adventure with a sprawling action-packed mini-movie, frequently incorporating some grandly overconceived stunt. We have here an exceptionally plot-oriented opening sequence the movie proper begins almost without a pause once we return from the credits. Following their success, Bond and Leiter parachute right in front of the church where Leiter's bride, Della (Priscilla Barnes), waits impatiently. This is done via a pleasingly big and overwrought stunt in which Sanchez's plane is hooked from a DEA helicopter, and dragged to earth. Oh, but that would be an awfully silly and low-key opening for a Bond picture, which is why Bond and Leiter are interrupted on their way to the church by DEA agents who want Leiter's help apprehending shadowy druglord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) for the first time in years, Sanchez has set foot on American soil, retrieving his erstwhile lover, Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto), from the arms of one of his rivals. Wedding bells! Not for our man James Bond (Timothy Dalton), of course - he's in the Florida Keys to act as best man at the wedding of his very good friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison, the first man to play Leiter a second time he previously showed up in 1973's Live and Let Die). This will prove meaningful in due course. Wilson and Richard Maibaumįirst things first: the film opens with the first significant change to the scoring of the iconic gun-barrel sequence though Monty Norman's James Bond Theme comes in when Bond shoots the camera and the blood streams down the screen, prior to that the music playing is not recognisable at all. A guide to all things Bond at Alternate Ending.
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