Re: Rate The Last Movie You Watched.
Licence To Kill - 8.5/10
As much as I enjoyed The Living Daylights, I enjoyed this film even more. Seeing Bond as a rouge agent hellbent on personal revenge, rather than having to save the world from a larger threat of one sort or another, was incredibly refreshing. I found the more straightforward plot to be charming in it's simplicity, allowing for more characterization and development for Bond and his villain. The Timothy Dalton films are two of my favorites in the series and he is easily my favorite Bond next to Daniel Craig, who seems to borrow more from Dalton's portrayal than that of any other former Bond. It's unfortunate that this film was received so poorly upon it's original release in 1989, largely I suspect due to the increased violence and Dalton's angle of playing Bond as cold and calculating, rather than funny and aloof. If released today, I think modern audiences would be much more accepting of it. In fact, many elements used here reminded me quite a bit of Skyfall.
Regardless, I really enjoyed this film. Timothy Dalton is the angry and conflicted everyman that Bond was originally intended to be before Roger Moore went all Adam West on us and turned the series into campy shlock and Bond himself into a joke. The bluray transfer looks great too. Very happy I gave this film a chance.