Previous Next

The Living Daylights is a James Bond movie, with Timothy Dalton in the lead role. Other than that, it's not particularly easy to describe. The narrative veers all over the place, and the film ultimately ends up as little more than a collection of sketches with the famous Bond theme linking them. I'm not entirely sure I understood it all, and I'm even less sure of why I am expected to care. But for the sake of at least trying to explain what's going on, I would sum it up in the following way.

MI5, the British Secret Service, likes to get hold of particular Russians, particularly those who are high up in the Communist regime. Bond has been charged with smuggling out a particular Russian General called Georgi Koskov. General Koskov is under constant watch, with the KGB aware that he might try to escape Russia. A plan has been hatched for Koskov to visit a classical music concert, go to the toilet at the interval and escape from the watching KGB by climbing out of a window and getting into a car waiting outside. Bond is part of the mission to see that this goes off without a hitch, and so he takes up position with a sniper rifle opposite the concert hall, apparently just in case any KGB officers see Koskov in the street and try to prevent him getting into the car.

Surprisingly, as Koskov tries to defect, a woman appears in the top floor of the concert building itself, holding her own sniper rifle and pointing it at him. Bond shoots the rifle out of her hands, and Koskov's rendition (via the Trans-Siberian pipeline) proceeds as planned. The only problem, for Bond, is that one of his colleagues reports him for not shooting the woman dead, suggesting that Bond spared her life because she was pretty, which is correct, although how his colleague knows this is anyone's guess.

With Koskov in hiding in the British countryside, and if Bond was now charged with protecting him from those avenging Ruskies, you might well have the makings of a pretty tense film here. Alas, it doesn't go down this route at all. For, no sooner has our man Koskov revealed some of his government's plans to MI5 and scoffed his first English breakfast, the safehouse in which he's hiding is successfully stormed by his countrymen and he's stolen right back again, somehow being kidnapped by KGB officers disguised as medical personnel in an emergency helicopter.

Now, look, I know what you're thinking by this point. Am I really just going to write out the entirety of what happens in the movie in this sort of sarcastic and bemused tone? Believe me, I really don't want to. The same person being kidnapped twice, with the result being that we've lost half an hour simply to come full circle, isn't exactly gripping stuff. And, as if this game of Capture The Flag isn't tedious enough, the next reveal is that this was all contrived by the Russians anyway. Yes, it seems the Russians knew the British liked to get hold of particular officers, so they deliberately put forward this certain General to be ostensibly 'turned' and give the British a load of false intel.

Are you following along so far? I suspect not. I mean, even Dallas: J.R. Returns was less confusing than this. And what doesn't help the movie at all is that, to even understand that this is what's going on, you've really got to be concentrating extremely hard on the very limited dialogue between all of the, ahem, "fighting". It's not particularly violent fighting; instead opting to be the sort of B-movie style violence where people leap around each other and shout a lot. The worrying thing is that I don't think the movie wanted to make me giggle and roll my eyes. But it did, and you'll also find it all far too silly to take seriously.

To return to the so-called plot again, I'm sure you're wondering what exactly this 'false intel' was that it was so important that the Russians fed to the British. Remember, the Russians really want the British to believe this information. They want them to believe it so much that they went to the trouble of allowing the British to kidnap one of its agents, and spent countless millions finding him again and spiriting him back to Russia. They did all this just so Koskov could tell the British something... so it must be something pretty big, right? Well, prepare yourself, you are not ready. Because this 'false intel' is literally this: We (the Russians) are going to kill your agents.

That's it. That's the entirety of what Koskov has to say. But what's really weird is that... well, the killing has already started. You know how every James Bond film starts with a sort of prologue, a mini-adventure where Bond ends up duffing up a few bad guys and sinking his teeth into a woman's neck? No?

Well, in The Living Daylights, this prologue shows Bond and two colleagues taking part in a training mission on the Isle Of Gibraltar. The three of them start by parachuting onto the island, all dressed in black, and presumably they need to get to a certain location without being shot by some of the "enemy soldiers" who are islanders equipped with paint guns. The trouble is that there's another man in black running around, killing for real. He knocks off agents one and two and then comes after Bond himself but, you guessed it, ends up fighting with Bond for ages and then gets offed in a spectacular way to usher in the main credits. This all happens in the first few minutes of the movie and this whole sequence seems completely disconnected to all the Russian kidnap stuff, right up until the point that the agent does this 'big reveal'. Yes, that man in black was one of theirs, he says, and the Brits are therefore already two spies down. So what Koskov is saying must be true...!

What?!!!

I'm getting brain-strain just describing the ridiculousness of this now. In this opening sequence, a great deal of time is spent trying to kill Bond... a pretty stupid idea in itself if Bond was going to be needed to spirit Koskov out of Russia via the Trans-Siberian pipeline a mere 48 hours later! Plus, how, pray tell, with the two agents dead, is this actually 'false intel' at all? It's pretty genuine intel, because the Brits were presumably wondering exactly What Went Wrong in that particular wargame up to this point (Bond doesn't ever mention it either, which is pretty odd too considering two of his friends died during it!).

Just as you're busy scratching your head and muttering "Um, what's going on?", the film now gives us yet another 'explanation' for what is actually going on. There's another Russian agent, Leonid Pushkin, who the Russians themselves want dead. So this whole 'false intel' operation was actually to goad the British into killing him, Pushkin. Because with two British agents dead, confirmation from the Russians that more liquidations will be committed soon, and the only lead spirited away back to Moscow, the Russians figure that the first thing the British will want to do is strike back by killing Pushkin. Why exactly the Brits would want to target Pushkin isn't really explained. Why the Russians don't just kill Pushkin isn't explained either. In fact, why the Russians want to kill Pushkin isn't even explained. They just do, alright? And if they have to engineer this whole kidnapping spectacle to convince the Brits to kill him, they will. Um, right.

Hence, why this film is little more than a series of sketches. If you think I've given away too many spoilers then, believe me, you're dead wrong. With a two hour runtime, and with all this rubbish largely confined to the first forty minutes, there's plenty of Bond's adventures to endure before the end credits. These adventures get progressively more random, with an eccentric American arms dealer, a heart-transplant smuggling ring which is actually a way of fencing diamonds, a long desert-based sequence with Bond and his lady holed up with the Mujahadeen, and so much porno tongue going on between Bond and that sniper hottie that you may vomit up your lunch.

But what's most alarming is the universal one-dimensional characterisation. There seems to be one thing that this film believes: No matter how important your mission, always remember that going "Phwoah!" at the nearest topless woman takes precedence over it. This applies to all men in this movie, from the Russian pipeline operator who gets seduced by what looks like Jaws' bigger and uglier sister right through to Bond himself, who doesn't even seem to be on any mission at all other than to get his end away with that hottie with the sniper rifle. You know, the one that he purposefully didn't kill.

There are some noteable action sequences including a mountain chase sequence in which Bond evades his pursuers by skiing away from them in a cello case, and a plane-based scramble in which Bond ends up one stressed cable-tie away from plummeting into the Afghan desert. However, to me there was one particularly scene which seemed to embody the whole ridiculousness of The Living Daylights and serve up its nonsense for all to see. That was "The Hotel Room" scene. Here, Bond busts in on Pushkin and his much younger and infinitely more attractive wife. Unfortunately for Bond, he is alone and Pushkin manages to call for backup, leaving Bond just a few seconds before Pushkin's security detail will pile into the hotel room. Which is clearly a problem which needs the following solution...

Bond doesn't run. Bond doesn't hide. Instead Bond *leaps across the hotel room and tears off the woman's dress*. Pushkin's bodyguard then flings open the door to find the woman *standing alone, stock-still with her breasts out*. Why she's just standing there, why she didn't try to fend off Bond's sexual assault, where her dress has even gone... None of this requires any explanation, it would seem. According to the necessity of going "Phwoah!" which I outlined above, the bodyguard immediately forgets that he's there to answer his boss's request for assistance, and instead just stands there ogling. Whereupon Bond, who has teleported behind the door smacks him with it, knocking him out. Pushkin, who is the head of the KGB does nothing whilst all this is going on, of course.

I'd venture to suggest a more fitting name for this meandering action-flick would have been The Living Nightmare. Because really it isn't worth watching. With the appalling characterisation, not to mention Bond's casual approach to sexual assault and stalking, the main action hero comes across more like Sid James in his prime than the world's most suave secret agent. Everything is stupidly contrived throughout and even the so-called action sequences aren't particularly thrilling. Obviously I could fill another couple of pages ranting about how little of this movie makes any sense whatsoever, and how there's no explanation at all for why certain characters do certain things. Yes, you might say that's par for the course with a James Bond movie, but I do find it notable here. While films like the original Indiana Jones trilogy have aged like fine wine, The Living Daylights is like the rancid half pint of milk you find at the back of your fridge during a clear-out. Expect to be disappointed, and you won't be disappointed.