Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 16: License to Kill.

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a couple months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the sixteenth entry, with a full review of  Timothy Dalton's second and sadly final turn as James Bond, License to Kill. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a possible guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should. Without further ado...

License To Kill

1989

Director:  John Glen

Starring:  Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell, Benicio del Toro, Talisa Soto

Rated: PG-13

Why don’t you wait until you’re asked?

Why don’t you ask me?

                        ~Exchange between James Bond and Pam Bouvier

STATS

Kills:  6

Girls:  Lupe Lamora, Pam Bouvier

Car:  Lincoln Mark VII LSC

Locales:  Miami, Republic of Isthmus

Odd Villain Trait:  Dario is an lunatic with a silver tooth and a switchblade

Song:  “License To Kill” performed by Gladys Knight*

Other notable song:  “If You Ask Me To” performed by Patti LaBelle

Director John Glen finishes out his tenure as director of the James Bond franchise delivering the film he was trying to make with his first effort (For Your Eyes Only).  The film takes a much darker and gritty course than any preceding 007 entry.  The script and direction plays in favor to Timothy Dalton’s strengths as James Bond that would make Ian Fleming smile if he were around to see it.  In a summer movie season packed with more colorful large scale pictures the initial reaction to License To Kill was not that of a positive one, and audiences did speak with their wallets.

Oliver Stone's star-filled, and unapologetically R-rated Savages, the official 'adult popcorn film of summer 2012', gets a down-and-dirty trailer.

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It used to be a custom of sorts to have at least one somewhat adult-skewing genre picture in any given summer, something to stand out for older audiences who liked their summer thrills with a bit less fantasy and a bit more gore and/or nudity.  Be it Wolf in 1994, A Time to Kill in 1996, Swordfish in 2001, The Road to Perdition in 2002, or Collateral in 2004 (along with, arguably The Manchurian Candidate redo), this once time-honored tradition somewhat went the way of the dinosaur as seemingly adult genre fare like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Da Vinci Code, Live Free or Die Hard and Salt got squeezed into the PG-13 zone and R-rated comedies like The Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, and The Hangover compensated for the lack of truly R-rated action fare.  Aside from the likes of The Expendables in 2010, summer has pretty much been the place where everything is aimed at everyone for the last several years.  But Universal senses an opening, not only moving this seemingly trashy bit of pulp fiction into the summer, but slotting it three days after the debut of Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man.