Licence To Kill 1989

[Jessica Wilson]

Licenceto Kill is a 1989 action-thriller film, the sixteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the second and final film to star Timothy Dalton as the MI6 agent James Bond. In the film, Bond resigns from MI6 in order to take revenge against the drug lord Franz Sanchez, who ordered an attack against Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter and the murder of Felix's wife after their wedding.

Licence to Kill was the fifth and final Bond film directed by John Glen, the last to feature Robert Brown as M and Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny. It was also the last to feature the work of the screenwriter Richard Maibaum, the title designer Maurice Binder and the producer Albert R. Broccoli, all of whom died in the following years.

Licence to Kill was the first Bond film to not use the title of an Ian Fleming story. Originally titled Licence Revoked, the name was changed during post-production due to American test audiences associating the term with driver's licence. Although its plot is largely original, it contains elements of the Fleming novel Live and Let Die and the short story "The Hildebrand Rarity", interwoven with a sabotage premise influenced by Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo.

For budget reasons, Licence to Kill became the first Bond film shot entirely outside the United Kingdom: principal photography took place on location in Mexico and the US, while interiors were filmed at Estudios Churubusco instead of Pinewood Studios. The film earned over $156 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews, with praise for the stunts, but received criticism for the darker tone.

DEA agents collect MI6 agent James Bond and his friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, on their way to Leiter's wedding in Key West, to have them assist in capturing drug lord Franz Sanchez. Bond and Leiter capture Sanchez by attaching a hook and cord to Sanchez's plane and pulling it out of the air with a Coast Guard helicopter. Afterwards, Bond and Leiter parachute down to the church in time for the ceremony.

Sanchez bribes DEA agent Ed Killifer and escapes. Meanwhile, Sanchez's henchman Dario and his crew ambush Leiter and his wife Della (murdering her in the process) while taking Leiter to an aquarium owned by one of Sanchez's accomplices, Milton Krest. Sanchez has Leiter lowered into a pond holding a Great White Shark. When Bond learns that Sanchez has escaped, he returns to Leiter's house to find that Leiter has been maimed and that Della has been murdered.[3][4] Bond, with Leiter's friend Sharkey, start their own investigation. They discover a marine research centre run by Krest, where Sanchez has hidden cocaine and a submarine for smuggling.

After Bond kills Killifer using the same shark pond used for Leiter, M meets Bond in Key West's Hemingway House and orders him to an assignment in Istanbul, Turkey. Bond resigns after turning down the assignment, but M suspends Bond instead and revokes his licence to kill. Bond becomes a rogue agent, although he later receives unauthorised assistance from Q.

Bond boards Krest's ship Wavekrest and foils Sanchez's latest drug shipment, stealing five million dollars in the process. He discovers that Sharkey has been killed by Sanchez's henchmen. Bond meets and teams up with Pam Bouvier, a pilot and DEA informant, at a Bimini bar,[5] and journeys with her to the Republic of Isthmus. He seeks Sanchez's employment by posing as an assassin for hire. Two Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau officers foil Bond's attempt to assassinate Sanchez and take him to an abandoned warehouse. They are joined by Fallon, an MI6 agent who was sent by M to apprehend Bond. Sanchez's men rescue him and kill the officers, believing them to be the assassins. Later, with the aid of Bouvier, Q, and Sanchez's girlfriend Lupe Lamora, Bond frames Krest by planting the $5 million in Wavekrest. Sanchez shuts Krest into a decompression chamber and cuts the oxygen cord, causing Krest to explosively decompress to his death. Bond is then admitted into the inner circle.

Sanchez takes Bond to his base, which is disguised as the headquarters of a religious cult. Bond learns that Sanchez's scientists can dissolve cocaine in petrol and then sell it disguised as fuel to Asian drug dealers. The televangelist Joe Butcher serves as middleman, working under Sanchez's business manager Truman-Lodge, who uses Butcher's TV broadcasts to communicate with Sanchez's customers in the United States. During Sanchez's presentation to potential Asian customers, Dario enters the room and recognises Bond. Bond starts a fire in the laboratory, but is captured again and placed on the conveyor belt that drops the brick-cocaine into a large processing machine. Bouvier arrives and shoots Dario, allowing Bond to pull Dario into the processing machine, killing him.

Later, a party is held at Sanchez's former residence. Bond receives a call from Leiter telling him that M has congratulated him for his work and offers him his job back. He then rejects Lupe's advances and romances Bouvier instead.

Shortly after The Living Daylights was released, producer Albert R. Broccoli and writers Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum started discussing its successor. The film would retain a realistic style, as well as showing the "darker edge" of the Bond character. For the primary location, the producers wanted a place where the series had not yet visited.[6] While China was visited after an invitation by its government, the idea fell through partly because the 1987 film The Last Emperor had removed some of the novelty from filming in China.[7] By this stage the writers had already talked about a chase sequence along the Great Wall, as well as a fight scene amongst the Terracotta Army.[8] Wilson also wrote two plot outlines about a drug lord in the Golden Triangle before the plans fell through out of Broccoli's concerns that the Chinese government would censor the script.[8][9] The writers eventually decided on a setting in a tropical country while Broccoli negotiated to film in Mexico,[6] at the Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City.[8] In 1985, the Films Act was passed, removing the Eady Levy, resulting in foreign artists being taxed more heavily.[7] The associated rising costs to Eon Productions meant no part of Licence to Kill was filmed in the UK,[10] the first Bond film not to do so.[7] Pinewood Studios, used in every previous Bond film, undertook only the post-production and sound re-recording.[11]

The initial outline of what would become Licence to Kill was drawn up by Wilson and Maibaum.[7] Before the pair could develop the script, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike and Maibaum was unable to continue writing, leaving Wilson to work on the script on his own.[12] Although both the main plot and title of Licence to Kill owe nothing to any of the Fleming novels, there are elements from the books that are used in the storyline, including a number of aspects of the short story "The Hildebrand Rarity", such as the character Milton Krest.[6][13] Felix Leiter's mauling by a shark was based on novel Live and Let Die,[7] whilst the film version of the book provided the close similarity between the main villain, Mr. Big, and Licence to Kill's main villain Sanchez.[14] The screenplay was not ready by the time casting had begun, with Carey Lowell being auditioned with lines from A View to a Kill.[6]

For the location Wilson created the Republic of Isthmus, a banana republic based on Panama, with the pock-marked Sanchez bearing similarities to General Manuel Noriega.[14] The parallels between the two figures were based on Noriega's political use of drug trafficking and money laundering to provide revenues for Panama.[16] Robert Davi suggested the line "loyalty is more important than money", which he felt was fitting to the character of Franz Sanchez, whose actions were noticed by Davi to be concerned with betrayal and retaliation.[11]

The United Artists press kits referred to the film's background as being "Torn straight from the headlines of today's newspapers"[17] and the backdrop of Panama was connected to "the Medelln Cartel in Colombia and corruption of government officials in Mexico thrown in for good measure."[18] This use of the cocaine-smuggling backdrop put Licence to Kill alongside other cinema blockbusters, such as the 1987 films Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop II and RoboCop, and Bond was seen to be "poaching on their turf" with the drug-related revenge story.[19]

After Carey Lowell was chosen to play Pam Bouvier, she watched many of the films in the series for inspiration. Lowell had described becoming a Bond girl as "huge shoes to fill", as she did not see herself as a "glamour girl", even coming to audition in jeans and a leather jacket. While Lowell wore a wig for the scenes set in the United States, a scene where Bouvier is given money and told by Bond to go and buy some new clothes (and, going off and doing so, also has her hair cut) was added so that Lowell's own short hair style could be used.[20]

Robert Davi was cast following a suggestion by Broccoli's daughter Tina,[6] and screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had seen Davi in the television film Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami.[21] To portray Sanchez, Davi researched the Colombian drug cartels and how to do a Colombian accent,[11] and since he was method acting, he would stay in character off-set. After Davi read Casino Royale for preparation, he decided to turn Sanchez into a "mirror image" of James Bond, based on Ian Fleming's descriptions of Le Chiffre.[6] The actor also learned scuba diving for the scene where Sanchez is rescued from the sunken armoured car.[11]

Up-and-coming actor Benicio del Toro was chosen to play Sanchez's henchman, Dario, for being "laid back while menacing in a quirky sort of way", according to Glen.[6] Wayne Newton got the role of Professor Joe Butcher after sending a letter to the producers expressing interest in a cameo because he always wanted to be in a Bond film.[8] The President of Isthmus was played by Pedro Armendriz Jr., the son of Pedro Armendriz, who played Ali Kerim Bey in From Russia with Love.[23]

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