I was concerned that Timothy Dalton was too well ingrained in my mind as a villain from his amazing performance in The Rocketeer, which I’ve seen about a dozen times and love dearly. His performance is just as amazing though and I’m surprised that he was only able to play the role twice. My suspicions about the producers making a tonal shift from Roger Moore’s old Europe Bond to a more modern Bond were correct, as this film introduced us to the first time that the main Bond melody was put over a drum machine, the bane of the 80’s. Forget Iran/Contra or the CIA crack cocaine epidemic, the most damaging thing to happen during the 80’s was that stupidly simply machine that lets anyone put their music to a beat.
It was interesting to see Afghanistan in such a positive light, The Living Daylights was released within a year of Rambo III, which also painted the rebels of Afghanistan as freedom fighters as well, so it’s obvious that Hollywood has a soft spot for that part of the world. Now days, it’d be difficult to find a movie set in that area without scary music playing over all the locals.
This was a great film with a rocky opening scene, I’m hoping the next Bond film keeps the quality just as high.
