Film Review: LICENCE TO KILL (1989, John Glen)

Stars: 3.8 of 5.
Running Time: 133 minutes.

Tag-line: "His bad side is a dangerous place to be."

Notable Cast or Crew:  Timothy Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, HOT FUZZ), Carey Lowell (DOWN TWISTED, DANGEROUSLY CLOSE), Robert Davi (DIE HARD, THE GOONIES), Talisa Soto (Kitana in MORTAL KOMBAT and MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION), Anthony Zerbe (THE DEAD ZONE, STEEL DAWN), Frank McRae (LAST ACTION HERO, 48 HRS.), Wayne Newton (TALES FROM THE CRYPT), Benicio Del Toro (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS), Everett McGill (TWIN PEAKS, SILVER BULLET, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS), Desmond Llewelyn ('Q' from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE through THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, from 1963 to 1999), Grand L. Bush (LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD).  Music by Michael Kamen (LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD).

Best One-liner:  "God, what a terrible waste... of money."

LICENCE TO KILL might be the meanest of all the Bond films, feeling at times more like a DEATH WISH sequel or a spin-off of SCARFACE.  It's by no means a top-tier James Bond film, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.  The plot is thus: after his longtime CIA buddy Felix Leiter becomes mutilated and widower'ed on his honeymoon, Bond goes rogue, has his license to kill revoked, and hunts down the drug lord (classic 80s character actor villain Robert Davi) responsible.  As I said, it's quite mean-spirited, and is chock full of severed limbs, non-consensual BDSM, exploding heads, torture, and all sorts of other stuff you wouldn't expect in a Bond film.  There was a gung ho wave of anti-drug paramilitary-ism in the late 80s and early 90s with so many franchises turning in a cartel-related installment:  DEATH WISH gave us DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, DIRTY HARRY gave us THE DEAD POOL, DELTA FORCE gave us DELTA FORCE 2: THE COLUMBIAN CONNECTION, the Jack Ryan series gave us CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, and the James Bond series gave us LICENCE TO KILL.  I could go on.

Now, what about those beloved minutiae– the strange little happenings and unexpected appearances that make 80s action movies so enjoyable for me?   Well, here are my top nine such moments in LICENCE TO KILL:

#9.  Ninjas fly down from the rafters and start shooting nets out of their sleeves like Spiderman slings web.



No, this isn't a Cannon Film, and no, they don't appear in any other scene.

#8.  Q's finest gadget by far in this film (compare to his last great offering, "The Ghetto Blaster" in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS) is a Polaroid camera that conceals a death-ray laser-beam.

PEW!

#7.  This random guy, whose explanation for a cartel torture-by-shark is to blame it on cartel torture-by-chainsaw.  He begins speculating to Timothy Dalton and Frank McRae about how much Columbians use chainsaws.

Then he says that they use them even more than people from Oregon.

What?  How is that a valid comparison?  Is it a logging industry reference?  Columbia and Oregon both possess a great deal of forest, though Columbia has four times the square milage of Oregon.  And if you were to pick a U.S. state that people associate with chainsaws, it'd probably be Texas.  Oh, nevermind– I get it.  It must be a handcrafted-artisanal-chainsaw-sculpture reference.

#6.  Wayne Newton as a preening televangelist cult leader.

He pulls it off wonderfully; it's no sort of stretch whatsoever.

#5.  Evil Everett McGill.

While I love "Good Everett McGill," as best depicted in "Big Ed" from TWIN PEAKS, I must say that I have a soft spot for "Evil Everett McGill," particularly as seen in SILVER BULLET and THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. Here, we get the Evil variety, and while he only has about five minutes of screen time before he is voraciously eaten by sharks, it's a fine showing.


#4.  Guest-directed by Lucio Fulci?  A man has maggots thrown in his face,

 and Bond nearly meets some eye trauma at the business end of a wall-mounted swordfish.


You will note that I just basically described every Lucio Fulci film.

#3.  Even in 1989, the "80s Rule of Pools" is still in effect.  I've written about this elsewhere, but the idea is that if A., a swimming pool exists, then B., someone fully clothed must be pushed into it, arms flailing.

It's simply the 80s Rule of Pools, Mr. Bond.

#2.  Benicio Del Toro.  Fresh off his first film appearance as "Duke the Dog-Faced Boy" in BIG-TOP PEE WEE, Del Toro really sinks his teeth into "Dario," a lesser cartel henchman.

For whatever reason, I think he's wearing the same black blazer and red shirt he wears six years later in THE USUAL SUSPECTS:

though by 1995, he no longer looks as much like a member of Menudo, which is a shame in its own right.

#1.  Robert Davi (and his pet Iguana).

 

I don't have much to add here, other than to point out the Iguana is wearing a diamond choker.  Davi acts throughout as if he's in a hard-R-rated drug war flick and not a mass-market James Bond movie, and his frightening presence comprises much of what makes this film so memorable.  It's probably also why this film created the largest gap (it would be six years until Bond returned in GOLDENEYE) in the Bond franchise since its inception!

–Sean Gill

Film Review: SILVER BULLET (1985, Daniel Attias)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by Stephen King, starring Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Terry O'Quinn, Everett McGill (TWIN PEAKS, HEARTBREAK RIDGE, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS), Lawrence Tierney (DILLINGER, RESERVOIR DOGS), werewolf suit by Carlo Rambaldi, who did the SFX for E.T., Argento's DEEP RED, Fulci's LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN, and scores of other classics.
Tag-lines: "It started in May in a small town and every month after that whenever the moon is full... It came back..."
Best one-liner: "Holy jumped up bald-headed Jesus palomina. From him I'd expect it. Sometimes I think your common sense got paralysed along with your legs. But from you Jane? You're Miss Polly Practical!" (said by Gary Busey's 'Uncle Red.')

Stephen King's best screenplay + a load of Italian names in the credits (De Laurentiis, Capone, Postiglione, Rambaldi, etc.) + Gary Busey (fresh off of the insanity of D.C. CAB) saying "I feel like a virgin on prom night"

+ Terry O'Quinn exuding way more pathos than is necessary + paralyzed Corey Haim in a hot rod wheelchair

+ a really intense priestly Everett McGill (TWIN PEAKS, HEARTBREAK RIDGE) + Lawrence Tierney wielding a ball bat named "The Peacemaker"


+ some good old New England mysticism + nearly as much eye trauma as a Fulci fick = serious, unarguable quality.

That's right, SILVER BULLET is top-notch 80's horror. And somehow, having a largely Italian crew is the best thing to even happen to a Stephen King adaptation. King movies fall flat on their faces when the delicate tonal balance (of scares, humor, corniness, weird speech patterns, Americana, etc.) is upset. And that balance is, unfortunately, VERY easily upset. THE SHINING succeeds because there's only one tone- impassive, emotionless, mind-numbing terror. CREEPSHOW succeeds because it's played only for E.C. Comics-style, blood-soaked laughs. SILVER BULLET has only one tone, too- and it's ITALIANO! The Italians bulldoze through the scary and cornball stuff alike, oblivious to the difference between them, but with a shit-ton of gleefully macabre enthusiasm. And it works!

Then they let Busey do his own thing, too, which is always a must. Busey plays lovable drunk 'Uncle Red,' a man as prone to heroics as he is to passing out in a driveway during a family function. And no one, least of all the script girl, can possibly predict what'll come out of his mouth next. He's on fire. And instead of it merely being a sideshow of insanity, it's perfect for the character, makes Uncle Red a true jewel in the crown of 80's horror flickery, and provides the true humanist core of the picture.

A textbook example of escapist entertainment at its best. Five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986, Clint Eastwood)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 130 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Clint Eastwood, Bo Svenson (INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, WALKING TALL PART II, THE DELTA FORCE), Everett McGill (TWIN PEAKS, SILVER BULLET, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS), Mario van Peebles (RAPPIN', JAWS 4), Moses Gunn (THE NEVERENDING STORY, ROLLERBALL, FIRESTARTER), Marsha Mason (DROP DEAD FRED, NICK OF TIME).
Tag-lines: "... the scars run deep."
Best one-liner: "Be advised. I'm mean, nasty and tired. I eat concertina wire and piss napalm and I can put a round in a flea's ass at 200 meters. So why don't you go hump somebody else's leg, mutt face, before I push yours in."

"Why don't I bend you over the table there... send you home with the 'I just pumped the neighbor's cat' look on your face?" So maybe this is a valentine to Reagan-era Jarheads or maybe it's a wry look at the state of institutionalized masculinity, but whichever way you choose to see it, it's a damned entertaining film. Clint brilliantly fuses some very specific genres: the 'irascible old man' flick, the military training drama, the trashy barroom romance, the zany war picaresque, and, most importantly, the summer camp movie. It could practically be MEATBALLS 5: BOOT CAMP.


Clint prepares to fling a boom box with extreme disdain for the box and its listeners.

This is the ideal movie for an afternoon in July; perfect for those days when you've got an ice cold beer, the swivel neck and the ceiling fans going at once, and the volume turned way up so you can hear it over the racket the locusts (and the fans) are making. Good. Now you can hear Clint growl "Shut your face, hippie!" at Mario van Peebles, who could be accurately described as any number of things- 'hippie' definitely not being one of them.

Tom 'Gunny' Highway might be the crabbiest, crankiest character Clint has ever played (though Walt Kowalski in GRAN TORINO certainly gives Gunny a run for his money). You even get the sense that Gunny would narrow his eyes and scowl at Dirty Harry. He would definitely scowl at Philo Beddoe.


Everett McGill (Big Ed on TWIN PEAKS) makes a great villain as the wet behind the ears officer who thinks he can tell Gunny what to do-

but he forgets Gunny didn't attend some fancy pants Ivy League university: he attended a nasty, little-known place of higher learning known as HEARTBREAK RIDGE. It was there he was educated in cluster fucks, pencil-necks who "asshole to asshole couldn't make a beer fart in a whirlwind," suckheads who write home to momma, and in the process became basically the toughest sonofabitch to ever wear the uniform. And he did all this while Christ was still a corporal. Five stars. Beers to you, Clint.

-Sean Gill