The Living Daylights (1987)

A Serious Bond Returns

The Living Daylights is the film where the series remembered that James Bond is supposed to be dangerous. After twelve years of Roger Moore’s charm and wisecracks, grown tired by the time of A View to a Kill, the producers cast Timothy Dalton, a classically trained stage actor who had read all of Ian Fleming’s novels and wanted to play the Bond on the page: tense, tough, moody and sometimes cruel.

John Glen directed it, his fourth Bond film, and it opened in the summer of 1987, the series’ twenty-fifth anniversary. It was a solid success, and audiences were divided about the new Bond. Time has been kind to Dalton, and many fans now rate his two films near the top of the series. My rating is an 8. It has a clever plot, strong action and a lead performance well ahead of its time.

Gibraltar

The pre-title sequence opens with a training exercise on the Rock of Gibraltar, where several double-0 agents parachute in to test the base’s defences. It turns deadly when a real assassin starts killing them, and the sequence ends with Bond on the roof of a runaway Land Rover full of explosives, fighting the killer as it careers down the winding roads toward the sea.

It’s a tense, physical opening, shot largely for real on the Rock’s steep roads, and it introduces Dalton’s Bond with precision. He’s not joking or posing. He’s focused, fast and furious, and when he lands on a yacht after the explosion and borrows a phone from a bored woman in a bikini, the one-liner is delivered with a tired, almost impatient edge. It tells the audience at once that this Bond is different.

The assassin leaves a note reading Smiert Spionam, death to spies, a slogan from Fleming’s novels, and it sets up the plot: someone appears to be reviving an old Soviet program to kill Western agents. The threat is personal from the first minutes, and the stakes feel real in a way they rarely had in the later Moore films.

The Defection

Bond is sent to Bratislava, in Czechoslovakia, to help a KGB general named Georgi Koskov defect to the West during a concert. A sniper is waiting to kill Koskov, and Bond is supposed to kill the sniper. When he sees that the sniper is a young woman, a nervous amateur holding a rifle badly, he deliberately shoots the gun out of her hands instead of killing her.

The moment is key for Dalton’s Bond. He disobeys orders because he judges the situation differently, and he tells his superior that if they fire him for it, he’d thank them. It’s the first time in years the series had shown Bond as a man with a conscience and a temper, a professional who follows his own judgment.

Koskov is smuggled out of the country through a gas pipeline, in a capsule that shoots him across the border, and the escape is a clever, funny set piece that recalls the ingenuity of the early films. Jeroen Krabbé plays Koskov as a charming, sweaty, garrulous schemer, and it’s clear from the start that he isn’t what he seems. He talks too much, eats too much and smiles too often.

Kara

The sniper turns out to be Kara Milovy, a cellist and Koskov’s girlfriend, played by Maryam d’Abo. Bond tracks her down and, suspecting she’s been used, befriends her. She believes Koskov loves her and that Bond is his friend, and Bond lets her believe it while he works out what’s really going on.

Their escape from Czechoslovakia is the film’s most charming sequence. Pursued by the police, they flee in Bond’s Aston Martin and, when the car is destroyed, slide down a snowy slope into Austria on Kara’s cello case, using the cello as a rudder. It’s absurd and delightful, and it’s the most playful moment in the film.

Kara is one of the more sympathetic Bond women, a musician caught up in a world she doesn’t understand, and Bond’s relationship with her is gentler and more monogamous than usual. It reflects the late eighties, when the producers deliberately toned down Bond’s womanising in response to changing attitudes, and it suits Dalton’s more serious interpretation.

The Aston Martin

The Living Daylights brought the Aston Martin back to the series for the first time in nearly two decades, a V8 Vantage fitted with Q’s gadgets: missiles, lasers, spikes in the tyres, a rocket booster and outrigger skis. Bond uses all of them in a chase across a frozen lake and snowy forest, escaping the Czech police in a sequence full of invention.

The chase ends with Bond deliberately destroying the car so that no one can use its secrets, and it’s a fine example of the film’s balance between old-fashioned gadget fun and a more grounded tone. The gadgets are there, and they’re used with purpose, not as jokes. Q’s workshop scene is brief and affectionate, and Desmond Llewelyn gets a few good lines.

The return of the Aston Martin was also a statement of intent. It linked Dalton’s Bond to the Connery years, when the car first became famous in Goldfinger, and it told audiences that the series was going back to its roots. The car has been a fixture of the franchise ever since, and this chase is one of its finest outings.

The Real Plot

Koskov’s defection is a trick. He’s working with Brad Whitaker, an American arms dealer and self-styled military genius played by Joe Don Baker, and the two are using Soviet money to buy weapons and opium in Afghanistan, planning to profit from both. Koskov faked his defection to make the British kill General Pushkin, the KGB chief who was about to expose him.

The plot is detailed and grounded in the real politics of the late eighties, with the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the arms trade and the drug trade all part of the story. It’s the most realistic Bond plot in years, closer to a spy novel than a fantasy, and it hands Bond a series of genuine moral choices along the way.

John Rhys-Davies plays Pushkin as a decent, weary officer, and Bond’s decision to trust him instead of killing him on orders is another sign that this Bond thinks for himself. The meeting between them in Tangier, with Bond holding a gun on the general and then choosing to listen, is one of the film’s quietest and best scenes.

Afghanistan

The final act takes place in Afghanistan, where Bond and Kara are held by Soviet forces and escape with the help of the mujahideen, led by an Oxford-educated commander played by Art Malik. The sequence was filmed in Morocco, and it lends the film a sweeping, epic scale in its last third, with cavalry charges across the desert and a Soviet airbase under attack.

The climax is spectacular. Bond hijacks a Soviet cargo plane loaded with opium, and he and Necros, Koskov’s assassin, fight while hanging from a cargo net dangling out of the open rear door, high above the mountains. The stunt work is superb, and the series has few action sequences as thrilling.

The portrayal of the mujahideen as heroic allies reflects the politics of 1987, and it looks very different now after the history that followed. It’s a reminder of how closely Bond films track the anxieties and alliances of their moment, for better and worse.

Barry’s Farewell

John Barry scored the film, his last for the series, and it ranks with his best, blending his classic orchestral style with electronic rhythms for a more modern sound. He even appears briefly on screen, conducting an orchestra at the concert in Vienna. It was a fitting farewell from the composer who had defined the sound of Bond for twenty-five years.

The title song was recorded by the Norwegian band a-ha, and the song is catchy, moody and distinctly eighties. The band and Barry reportedly clashed during its production, and the version in the film differs from the one a-ha later released. The Pretenders also recorded two songs for the soundtrack, including the romantic theme for Bond and Kara.

Dalton’s Bond

Dalton plays Bond as a man under pressure, someone who doesn’t enjoy killing and does it anyway because the job demands it. He’s intense, irritable and serious, and he makes Bond feel like a real spy for the first time in years. He’s less charming than Moore and less effortlessly cool than Connery, and he’s closer to Fleming than either.

At the time, many viewers found him too grim. Audiences had grown used to Moore’s light touch, and Dalton’s darker Bond felt like a shock. Two decades later, Daniel Craig’s Bond would take the same approach to enormous acclaim, and Dalton’s performance now looks ahead of its time. Many fans who dismissed him in the eighties have come back to his films with fresh eyes.

Toy Soldiers and a Sweaty General

The villains are the weak point. Joe Don Baker’s Whitaker is a cartoonish figure who plays with toy soldiers and wears military costumes, and he’s never a real threat. Koskov is more fun than frightening. The plot is complicated enough to lose some viewers, and the film runs a little long, especially in the Tangier section.

It’s an 8. Watch it for Dalton, for the Gibraltar opening, the cello case, the Aston Martin and the cargo net fight, and for John Barry’s final score. Smart, exciting and underrated, it deserves more attention than it gets, and it’s the right place to start for anyone curious about Dalton.

Craft Note

The Verdict on The Living Daylights

My verdict is an 8: a clever plot, strong action and a lead performance that pointed toward the series’ future. See it for Timothy Dalton, the cello case and the cargo net, and for John Barry’s farewell.

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