The Living Daylights

Here we arrive at the fourth Bond, who brings with him only the second Moneypenny in the series. The movie is a bit of a mixed bag, because it was still originally written for Moore's joke-heavy style while Timothy Dalton plays the role pretty straight and gritty, which a lot of people didn't like at the time but got Daniel Craig accolades almost two decades later. The humor is still intact here and there with things like a chase down a snowy mountain in a cello case. The tone shifts really seemed to come fast and furious. After the opening, the story begins with Bond overseeing a Russian officer's defection to the west with the sniper rifle, and he's all business and super serious. Then he send him across the border in an oil pipeline. Wacky! Later, he helps sneak the female assassin out of town, who turns out to be the officer's lover. Serious. Then they escape some authorities in the most gadget-heavy chase sequence I've seen in the series. Wacky!

This back and forth continues throughout the film. It's not jarring or anything, it just felt a little unusual. The plot involves the fake reinstatement of a Russian initiative to kill spies, betrayals, drug trades, arms dealers, Afghan terrorists played as good guys, and fake assassinations. Despite all the bad crap going on around him, Dalton is surprisingly non-lethal in this film, racking up one of the smallest kill totals in the series. While others nearby are fighting his battles, he's doing his part to stop the villains without murdering all of them, although he does do a bit of that. The main Bond girl is a bit dim and doesn't wear the standard issue very-little, but for some reason I liked her. The chemistry between the two was good and believable for the first time in a while for the series, and her character just worked. John Rhys-Davies is likable as a Russian general Bond ends up working with, and this movie also marks the final appearance of General Gogol, who's been alternately an ally and an antagonist since the third Moore film. This was Dalton's only perceived success in the role, and a pretty solid Bond movie.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "The Living Daylights" by A-ha
Foreign locations: Gibraltar, Czechoslovakia, Vienna, Morocco, Afghanistan
Bond, James Bond: 7:25
Martini shaken, not stirred: 56:30, 1:18:25 (unspoken)
Ladies seduced: 2
Chases: 2
Kills: 2, plus explosion victims
Non-lethal takedowns: 10