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TT122 The Bondathon Goes Back to 1989: A Deep Dive into Licence to Kill!
The Bondathon is finally BACK!!
Get ready to be transported back to the world of 1989 as we rekindle the sparks of the James Bond movie, Licence to Kill, unravel Timothy Dalton's determination to inject realism into the 007 franchise and remember how it felt to be 12, 16 or whatever age you were in 1989!
Journey with us as we navigate through the thrilling plot, appreciate the impeccable clothing, dissect the stellar cast, and marvel at the mind-blowing special effects and stunts.
We don't shy away from the hard-hitting aspects either. Prepare for an exploration of the film's unprecedented violence, the shock of Felix Lutter's tragic fate, and the chilling reality of David Hederson's wife leaving the set due to the intensity of the scenes. But fear not, as we bring light to the dark, laughing at the humorous undertones of characters like Sharky, who is ironically petrified of sharks.
Our voyage doesn't stop there. We delve into the film's portrayal of cults in the late 80s, how the AIDS panic influenced a more chaste Bond and the enigmatic misunderstandings in Licence to Kill.
We pick apart plot points, highlight the standout stunts, and, of course, recall our favorite moments. Join us for a trip down memory lane, and for some, a fresh look at a classic Bond movie.
Don't miss out on our lively and insightful analysis of Bond's universe and beyond!
Enjoy!
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Licence To Kill is an EON Production. All views expressed on this episode are the opinions of the hosts.
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Email the show at tailoringtalkpodcast@gmail.com
We saw it last month because that was the film that we did see in Living Day Lights.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you saw it because you were doing this podcast. Did you see it before that? Probably not.
Speaker 1:I've seen bits of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, there you go yeah.
Speaker 1:But this is called a Bondathon. Like how great.
Speaker 5:So I think you both play a game of Black Jack, you see, and whoever wins is correct.
Speaker 3:Oh this I tell you what. In this film, Black Jack could be easily won as a single deck shoe. It would be well easy to win this one.
Speaker 5:No five decks. Come on, five decks.
Speaker 3:No, there was only one deck there. I only saw one deck there.
Speaker 5:He was playing five decks. Was he playing as five people?
Speaker 3:No, no, there was five houses.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But there was only one deck of cards. There was 52 cards.
Speaker 5:So easy. Easy because you can easily beat it Easy beat it, easily beat it.
Speaker 1:Right order order. Remember these podcasts. This is okay, sorry, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the one that's only just watching each Bondathon as just shooting for the podcast.
Speaker 1:That's right, Five gods, Phil shut up seriously or I will find my license to go, drive down to my house and meet you.
Speaker 5:No, I think it's going to be fine Sorry.
Speaker 4:It's been removed. How many times can one man leave you breathless?
Speaker 2:When you get on his bad side. Your number is up.
Speaker 3:Timothy Dalton is James Bond 007.
Speaker 5:License to kill.
Speaker 1:Hello Taming Talkers, it's time for the Bondathon. For those of you joining us for the first time, my friends and I are watching the entire James Bond movie series, from beginning to end. One movie and one month at a time. Unless your name is Philip Rowland, some of us have seen them all. Some of us have seen some of these movies for the very first time and some of us haven't seen some of them, and I have no idea what he's doing back here.
Speaker 1:We deep dive into each film, covering everything from our overall review to the plot, clothes cast behind the scenes, stories and our favorite moments. If you haven't already, please help the show by subscribing. We need as much help as we can get and leave us a rating and a review. If you're listening at the latest Step into the Taming Talk Time Machine, as we head to 1989, following Timothy Dalton's determination to make the 007 movies more realistic and believable, the writers got to work writing a script especially crafted for the way that Dalton wanted to play the part. The result was a more serious film with a more believable plot. Yes, we are reviewing the License to Kill. First, let's introduce my co-host Back after a bit of an absence our cult shot With a license to Phil. It's Philip Rotman.
Speaker 3:Bobby, how are you doing? You all right.
Speaker 1:I'm having a tough film. Yeah, I know you like that one, don't you? I mean, since we're careering downhill in an 18-foot truck whatever they call it 18-wheeler truck, let's just keep this going, Phil. Very good, Thank you, Very happy to have you back, Slightly distressed that you haven't seen the film before this one. So yeah, Anyway, there we go. The main work is to watch the living daylights, please. Ah, Okay, this really is just like the worst one ever and we haven't really got it going. It's here from Paypal's turn. Yeah, it would not be a bonce on it. It's about the sultry tames of the man with a license to thrill. It's John Evans from the Paypal's turn podcast. John, how are you?
Speaker 5:Bless your heart, bobby, bless your heart. I am very well-finkied, thank you.
Speaker 1:Why are you blessing my heart? Are we doing a drug deal? Are you pretending to have that?
Speaker 5:500 quid from Chicago there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you very much. $1,000 a key Awesome, also from Paypal's turn. It's the gadget crew with HeartGold the voice of reason. The man who is licensed to distill any argument Alex Hansford. Alex, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm very well, thank you. I have been watching Bond with no exception or deviation. Boom, so bear that in mind for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, loyalty is very, very important to me, phillip.
Speaker 5:Bobby, can I ask if it's a Bond podcast? Rather than roasting Phil, are we lightly sautéing him with a martini on the side?
Speaker 1:I'm currently making a sign that says he disagreed with something that ate him, and then I will send him to Pal to dismember him later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1:Anyway, my intro's completely effed up because Mark hasn't made it again. We've been teasing this for ages and, mark, if you're listening to this, seriously, do we love you Get your ass on this? Brosnan's starting soon, all right, and you're meant to be the expert on him. Yeah, there you go. So before we get started, ladies and gents, we need to get our spoiler alert in. We will be spoiling the living daylights out of this movie. See, I am really into my recycling, so if you haven't seen Licensed Phil.
Speaker 1:Hit pause, go see the movie and rejoin us after Boys. Also, because Mark is not here, my icebreaker has gone completely out the window. You will be relieved to know, but we all know each other, so there's no need to break the ice. Was this your first time? Let's go to John, because John was actually on time today, very punctual, and he's well. Actually it's a tie between you and Alex because you're both really super nice to me and Phil's been a horrible spot. So I love you, phil. You know I do. John, was this your first time? No, I meant seeing Licensed to Kill.
Speaker 5:Oh right, you know I've seen it before. Listen, bobby. Let's print all these questions for the next 20-odd podcast. I have seen every Bond before, oh you have. I have seen every single Bond before.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm glad because that actually saved me 10 seconds every episode now, okay, good, and how was it for you this time, ralph? Actually no, that's review. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5:I don't want to spoil my opinion yet. I think there's going to be some disagreement tonight, so that's what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:Yep, exactly. Do you know what? I feel really bad now, Phil. First time seeing Licensed to Kill.
Speaker 3:It is my first time seeing Licensed to Kill.
Speaker 1:yes, yeah, so it was my first time too. There was a lot going on, because Phil and I are probably the closest in age of all of us, because there's only a couple months between us, and there was a lot going on in 1989, you know, if you're a 12-year-old kid.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. I don't think that's a good enough excuse, because I was 16 and blimey when you hit 16, there's plenty you can do Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we had parents that wouldn't let us go out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know Asian, aren't they? Yeah, exactly, alex. Do we need to pre-empt things with you? Have you seen every single Bond film?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I watched a lot of them, but I hadn't watched this one before.
Speaker 4:Okay, so it was your first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was my first time. When this came out, I was nine and this is a 15, so I never saw it and it just skipped by, and then we moved on to Bruce and then I never looked back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know we can talk about what was going on at the time now, because 1989, this was released in the summer of 89, and you had let's see and Phil free just to interrupt and chip in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusades. We had that in 1989, which was probably the most hyped film that year, with all the merchandise and everything and the Clint Soundtrap, all that stuff. Lethal Weapon T there's definitely a couple of others that are licensed to kill.
Speaker 3:There was Ceno Evil here. No Evil came out in 1989 as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I'm thinking Blockbuster's not.
Speaker 2:That's the future of Block 2.
Speaker 5:Like licensed to kill was the only Bond. That's a 15. Yeah that blows my mind.
Speaker 3:Well, in actual fact Was it a 15 when it was first out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Was it really yeah?
Speaker 1:it was. So you know that's so for me. I remember vaguely that Dalton was Bond and there was another Bond film out called Licensed to Kill. I remember Carrie Lowell because very distinctive, with the haircut and everything in the promotional posters and stuff, and I remember the song because it was played on radio a lot. The actual movie would just pass me by and I think because it was a 15, the age of 12, I can't remember. But you know secondary school, you know sleepovers, watching bootleg copies of Bram Stoker's Dracula and God knows what, a Stuart McLaughlin's house sorry, the inside joke between me and Phil and you know the cinema, the things that you did go to see.
Speaker 1:If you went to the cinema with things like Michael Jackson's Min Walker and stuff, like that, although I think that might have been the year before this.
Speaker 2:That was the year before. Excellent adventure.
Speaker 1:Was that?
Speaker 2:1989? That was 1989.
Speaker 4:That was a bit of a slater, though.
Speaker 2:It was, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:It wasn't popular when it first came out.
Speaker 2:No, no, it wasn't it kind of grew. Little Mermaid came out.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that was pretty big that yeah, so, honey, I Shrunk the Kids. That's it. That was the other summer media. I remember going to Ghostbusters 2. Yeah, Ghostbusters 2, yeah. So I remember going to the cinema, being allowed to go to the cinema to see Honey. I Shrunk the.
Speaker 5:Kids An amazing film. Do the right thing, Wes Bycley. I love that film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, we're talking about blockbusters that came out that this had to compete with. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 5:Fairna.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know it was a 15, and in the actual fact, the first cut of the film, the BDFC were hovering, overgiving it an 18. Because the actual original cut was so violent. We'll get into all of that because this was quite, I popping the head, blowing the violent as a movie that was done really badly, so anyway, there we go Synopsis.
Speaker 1:So basically, the film opens with Right now let's take a vote. Actually, do we want to do this, starting from beginning of the film to end the film and follow the plot, or do we want to go? Do we want to go I need a holiday cut. I'm short-serving all over the place or do we want to go?
Speaker 5:categories I mean, we can start trying to do it in order to see what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that always works out well. Yeah, that's true, phil Phil. This is yeah. I'm happy with that. Unlike Sanchez's Island, this is a democracy. I'm actually happy with that. Yeah, go for it, Right cool so.
Speaker 4:What happens to the?
Speaker 5:It's the catching of Sanchez, isn't it at the beginning? Well, actually, the first thing is the gun barrel sequence yeah, it's a gun.
Speaker 1:We get our first taste of Michael Cayman, who has stepped in, for who's taken over musical duties from John Barry. So John Barry had surgery throat surgery at the time and they didn't want to fly him out to the States because they thought it'd be dangerous. So Michael Cayman came in. Now Michael Cayman, up to that point, had been famous for scoring movies like Die Hard Lethal Weapon, and his stank is all over the soundtrack of this film.
Speaker 1:Because if it wasn't a Bond film, if you took Timothy Dole out of the equation and put AN other 80s action hero in there, it would have just been For me it would have just looked and sounded like another generic 80s action movie. It really had that Michael Cayman kind of signature. You listen to some of the overtures and sequences in there and where he's used the original Monty Norman Bond theme as well and put his own kind of, I think, plink onto it, it's basically Michael Cayman doing Michael Cayman, which is not what John Glenn said, because John Glenn said he hired Michael Cayman because he thought he'd be able to do the most. What's it?
Speaker 5:Do it justice.
Speaker 1:John Barry style, yeah, exactly which it just really wasn't. So there we go. But the gun barrel sequence Dalton's turn to camera for the shot kind of gave you a hint of what this film was going to be about, because it's probably one of the most deliberate turns and sheets to camera of a gun barrel sequence that I can remember, Very intense, like super intense. So yeah, so there was that. And then we open out with Bond and Felix Leiter, and it is David Hedgeson returning. He last played Felix in Live and Let Die about 15 years before, and Sharky in the Battle of Nogue, Paul Goh.
Speaker 2:Justice for Sharky.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And they are on the way to Felix's wedding to Della when the DEA, or whatever they are kind of find them in a helicopter. Yeah, they find them in a helicopter to tell Felix that this drug lord that he's been tracking friends Sanchez, they've located him and they're about to go on a raid. And so Felix basically decides that that's more important than his upcoming nuttuals and then boggles off to go and do that.
Speaker 5:I think at the same time, bobby isn't Sanchez dealing with an extra marital relationship in a house somewhere? Isn't he getting some bloke who's boffing his girlfriend at the same time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically, well, girlfriend is questionable because girlfriend suggests that it's a relationship he's chosen. Squeeze, yeah, I think Lou Pei, who is the female in question.
Speaker 1:I think she's more a prisoner than a willing participant in that relationship. He has gone to break up the lovemaking that's going on between her and whoever she's getting off with and says something like you want his heart, he'll give you his heart, and then tells his henchmen to cut the pork eye's heart out. So I don't know why I'm laughing. It's horrible. It's the first of many very horrible things in this film.
Speaker 5:He also. He beats her with some sort of leather whip, isn't he?
Speaker 1:He beats her with a. It's a stingray tale.
Speaker 5:Yeah, OK.
Speaker 1:It's a stingray tale and that was taken from one of the Fleming short stories where the villain in that piece basically likes to whip his wife with the tale of a dead stingray. So go for it now. I thought it was quite a good opening sequence.
Speaker 5:I think what's his face? The actor Robert Davy, who's a very famous kind of he's always a bad, isn't he? I thought he was a really good villain in this film. Actually, I thought he was quite a dark, brooding villain.
Speaker 1:I thought, when you look at the cast list, there's so much good about the acting in this and I think Forget about my 80s action thing, that was just from a soundtrack point of view. There was so much good about this and I actually really I mean I'll just say it now I really enjoyed this. I was really riveted throughout. I thought the plot was good, I thought the writing was decent and you know, overall it was a pretty good odd movie and I quite like the change of tone and pace and how pretty it got. But a lot of audiences didn't, unfortunately so. But Phil, how do you find that opening sequence? Did it kinda hook?
Speaker 3:you in. I really wanted to kind of get into it in terms of, you know, the characters being believable and things like that. I think that the main villain was believable throughout and he did have a darkness to his character, which is kind of how he is in many of the other films that he's done, maybe with the exception of Die Hard Die Hard, yeah, or Predator 2.
Speaker 5:Phil on the side. Don't you think that was intentional?
Speaker 3:He was by then an established actor Was he Was that earlier and you were all meant to think that he was a bad guy weren't you when he wasn't.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely I. I was gonna say I think that as, unlike what Bobby said, I did think that the writing was a little bit cheesy. I thought there was violence, there was an over tone of violence, but then there was an under tone of really cheesy writing. For me, I wanted the writing to be a little bit better, to make the overall violence a little bit more of something that would be believable to watch, and I found a disconnect myself, personally.
Speaker 1:So there was a writer's strike around the time of this film. So they came up with the first treatment where the story was set in China. But then Cubby basically tracked on that because he thought that the Chinese might sense the film too much. So then they had to rewrite. And then at the point where they started to rewrite, richard Maybam dropped out because he was a member of the screenwriters guild or whatever, and so Michael G Wilson had to write the script on his own because he wasn't a member of the guild. And so a lot of this.
Speaker 1:And I think about the time that Michael Wilson started to co-write these movies, which I think started back with possibly Octopussy maybe the other one of you to a Kill, that's when he started to insert cameos of himself in the films.
Speaker 1:So apparently there's a website where they've listed every Michael G Wilson cameo in every Bond. But basically this then became his kind of brainchild and he was partly influenced by Dalton saying and I'm just going to quote him here I wanted to make the movies much more realistic and believable. Over 25 years these films and this character have gone off down lots of different avenues. There was a whole period where they became rather fantastical and gimmicky. The humor had become too exaggerated two-tonguing cheeks obviously a reference to Roger Moore there. When you go back to the books, you're dealing with a real man, not a superman, a man beset with moral confusions, apathies and uncertainties, one who's often very frightened, nervous and tense. And so Wilson basically kind of took that and ran with it, and I don't know if he was partaking in the powder that was flying around in this movie, but maybe just went a little bit too far.
Speaker 3:But so. If that's what he was going for. Maybe Timothy Dalton didn't deliver it enough, and maybe the likes of Piers Brosnan did.
Speaker 1:Well, they had a reset for GoldenEye, which, again, we won't talk about now. As long as you watch GoldenEye before we were called the next one, phil, then we can get into it.
Speaker 3:Well, I've seen GoldenEye, so that's fine.
Speaker 1:The thing is, you know, from the next one I'm going to stop asking the question have you seen it before? And if anyone says I'm going to second, I haven't seen this before, then they just get kicked out of the Zoom call straight away. Because we are now sort of timelines, the kind of narrowing, because when you look up some of the actors obviously the first thing I did is look up the chicks that were in this movie they're not a huge, you know, they're not like sort of 80 or 90 or dead or something. You know, like Talisa Soso is 55, 56, I think, recently just beaten breast cancer. So well done. She'll never hear this, but anyway. So yeah, and so we are kind of starting to enter a time period where, you know, volunteer is more commonplace for us and we would have seen them. But anyway, yeah, sorry, back to opening sequence, alex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I liked the premise of the fact that it was the wedding and then they had to get back for the wedding. I thought that was quite fun and then the fact that they did the skydiving sequence on it was really that just kind of the thing is. One of the challenges that I have with this film is that I really enjoyed the light of side of Bond, and this is not that kind of a Bond. So I looked for light moments throughout it and I'm still recovering from Oppenheimer and I wanted stuff. Don't worry, barbie helped with that, we'll talk about that another time, but I'm just getting over that. And then I was just like it's really dark and so any lightness was kind of really appreciated and so I loved that. There wasn't very much to raise your spirits, but yeah, I just thought, yes, go and do some skydiving, do some what I would call Bond action scenes, do that. I expect that, and technically it was quite good to watch as well.
Speaker 1:But yeah, because basically they go off to Sanchez, he escapes in the plane, flies off. They then get back in the DEA helicopter. At one point I said to Carolina so this helicopter pilot doesn't know whether he's coming or going, because he's been up, he's been down. He's been up, he's been down.
Speaker 5:Now he's going back up again this amazing bulletproof helicopter. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So he manages to get himself over Sanchez's plane and then Bond basically jumps out of it. I can't remember quite. Let's go fishing, felix.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then he manages to hook the cable around the tail of this plane and then they end up I mean literally, yeah, like catching a plane, like catching a fish. I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:I know it wasn't the helicopter for it, but it just had a little bit of like airwolf sort of nostalgia, because it was just like chasing something that clearly should have gone off and that he should have struggled to catch up with the plane. But they didn't and I was just like, hmm, okay, I'm sorry, I just didn't add that in my mind, but it was yeah, no, but that's the thing. I really enjoy that, because I was like they've put a lot of effort into this and it showed it wasn't some of the cheesy stunts and stuff that you had in the more days. You know, just don't hold up anymore. Whereas that I was like actually that's pretty good, I was quite happy with that, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, that's a start. I think it was a good start.
Speaker 1:I think the other thing that really helps the stunts in this film overall are the fact that a lot of the well, all of the actions being done by Dalton himself, so all the pickup shots and so on, it's him, Whereas with the and obviously they did have a stunt double for him. But, as John Glenn said, you know, Dalton did all the action. I don't need my leading actor to do the stunts. There's a difference between the two. Whereas in, obviously in the more films, I think the number of times you know you saw even just a pickup shot and it wasn't even him, especially in the 4K restorations, is very spot on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, extremely. So yeah, you know that you know hats off to the director and to Dalton for that, because that really just added to the sort of layer of you know believability that you actually do get with a lot of Daniel Craig stuff actually that we see later on, and it's not something I really noticed or ever had a problem with in the Brosnan films actually, but maybe rewatching them again because I haven't seen any of them for a while, but yeah, so that was the opening, so they get, so they get their man and they parachute down to the wedding. John, you've got something to.
Speaker 5:Can I just give you my thoughts in the opening as well quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course you get. Oh sorry, I've got to ask you.
Speaker 5:I won't say much, but people have gone over quite a lot. But I think for me it was one of the most emotionally affecting sequences and I obviously that includes what happens to Della afterwards. I for a Bond film. I was quite upset, I was quite moved by what happened, and that's not often what you get, what you see in Bond films, is it? They're generally quite sort of lighthearted, as I like to say, and popcorn friendly. I found this one quite emotionally affecting. I was really upset for Felix and for Bond. I guess that sets the tone for a film, but I liked what they were doing there with that. I'll give you a heads up now. I really like this film as well.
Speaker 1:But yeah, just thought I'd mention that there were some really nice moments, like when they give him the lighter engraved, you know his lighter from Felix Lighter, although I wonder, though, because the flame on that thing is pretty fucking high.
Speaker 1:Sorry, you know this was a 15 Bond film, so this is I'm going to take the explicit rating for this podcast and for a warning at the beginning when I edit it but, seriously, so it's a pretty long flame, and I was wondering if Felix, basically to save some money, it's some old CIA gadget that he just found in the bargain bin, like sort of ran over to the food.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, we got to, we got to get, we got to get barn to present. Yeah, had it had it inscribed, saved a few quids. And you know, there you go, little knowing it would save Bond's life later on. Spoiler alert. So that was nice, the I did find it a little bit weird when Della and he were kissing and lips and stuff. Yeah that's kind of like is that an American thing or is that customary for the best man to?
Speaker 5:I think it was just show how close they actually were. I mean they. There was the confidence there that there was no sexual politics at all. It was just very, very, very close friends.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to clarify this now, because Phil was actually my best man at my wedding. Did you do the same?
Speaker 2:Did you?
Speaker 1:did you and Carolina Did you? You can tell me now it's been 15, 14 years or something. She owns half the company, so getting divorced is expensive. Boreas.
Speaker 3:No, we didn't do anything like that, but, to be fair, you were absolutely off your face drunk, so you wouldn't have had a clue anyway. Actually, I wasn't because I was running around trying to, you know, deal with.
Speaker 1:You know I was. I was a problem eliminator at my wedding.
Speaker 5:Would you have been sober enough to jump out of a plane and jump out of a helicopter and fish a plane?
Speaker 1:No, Bobby, we had my. We had my stag do the night before it's a mistake about midnight and I said to Phil right, that's it. You know I'm getting married tomorrow. I'm going back to the hotel expecting my best man to come with me. So we get to the cab, I get in, he slams the door in my face and says make sure he gets back. All right, see you later. And he buggers off. Well, carries on part.
Speaker 3:That's pretty, that was pretty standard. So yeah, so I was stone cold sober the next day.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. So, yeah, so that was a bit weird. But then there was a very tender moment when bonds goes to say goodbye and she gives him the garter and you know it says, you know, whoever gets the glasses, you know, see equivalent, I guess, of catching the BK and he says no, thank you. I'm trying to deal with Shaxen, and that's a very emotional thing. And then Carolina said to next thing she said what's his problem? Carolina said he was. He was married, wasn't he? And his wife got killed. But she missed that bit in on him and she's secret service that she didn't realize. And then, very conveniently, felix chips in to help me. He was married once.
Speaker 2:It was a long time ago Must be listening to you, so I thought that was very well played.
Speaker 1:And it was. It was very, yeah, it was very emotional, kind of a bit like that bit in the spy who loved me when she mentions to him at the bar Roger Moore. But you know he was married and he does the best bit of acting he did in the whole seven movies that he did. And then we move into the title sequence, morris Binder's last title sequence for the Bond series and it totally looks like it was his last one as well, because it looks like he just didn't give a shit.
Speaker 5:It wasn't much left to do to the imagination. That sequence was there. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you, and they featured the Asian lady doing all the sort of type T stuff for wherever it was that she was doing for a lot of that whole sequence and you know that element of the film was only a few minutes in the end. But yeah, apparently they had a lot of problems with Binder because he wasn't telling them what he, what he was up to and he only submitted his whatever he did at the very last minute. So then that's time to critique or change anything and they really, you know it really was the well, all the hallmarks of someone who knows this is his last gig, I mean basically doesn't give a shit, Do you think?
Speaker 5:do you think he knew it was a 15 when he made this title sequence, because I'm not sure how do I put this. The nipshots would have got through that in terms of their clarity to the the BBFC, if it'd been a 12 or a page. Well, there was no time to do this.
Speaker 3:I think previous nipshots have been in title sequences.
Speaker 2:I don't know what no one ever knows.
Speaker 3:No, but there's no one ever knows what the rating is going to be when they make it.
Speaker 5:Let's, let's, let's get granular here. So there have been scandalous title sequences before and born, but none have had the clarity of Ari Olai that the sequences had and I think that's, there's your. There's a title of the episode, bobby, but I think to see that definition it was, it was, it was a mesh, overshadowed the top, but even so, I think that wouldn't have got through to a PG title sequence in a Bond film with that clarity. And no, I did not pause to check it out, bobby just saw it as a swan past.
Speaker 3:But you see it in four, four K, so what didn't that make a difference?
Speaker 5:Oh, that's, that's, that's two K nipples, isn't it? That is. What was that? Now, what did you watch?
Speaker 1:it in, then Did you watch it on VHS?
Speaker 3:or something. I wasn't paying too much attention to the opening sequence, to be fair.
Speaker 5:It was always do. They're very good.
Speaker 3:It didn't got to, it didn't capture my sort of imagination, this particular one compared with previous ones.
Speaker 1:You know what I never I don't notice what's really going on in the titles, because I'm really focused at reading the credits.
Speaker 2:And the double, double sevens that rolled across just at the right moments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, I like knowing who the Dolly Grip was and second stage carpenter was and all anyway bullshit, the song's really good. I thought, I remember that from my childhood because it was always playing on the radio like all the time because it hit numbers.
Speaker 1:It was top 10 single in the UK, didn't do that great everywhere else in the world. It sort of made the Billboard 100 but didn't get into the top 10. But it did well over here and I really like it kind of. For me goes back licensed to kill Gladys Knight. Goes back to the grand, bombastic orchestral theme songs that we used to get with the Connery films and so on. The overtures in it are very much like Goldfinger. If you start that song off and cut her vocals out and then start to sing Shirley Bass's Goldfinger over the top, the two songs basically almost mashed together. Phil's nodding. You know what I mean, don't you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do. I mean what I would say is Gladys Knight as an artist in the UK is not as well known as Gladys Knight as an artist in America. So in America everyone knows Gladys Knight and the pits and so she had a very definite sound. And this falls outside of that normal Gladys Knight sound. So for us, because we weren't that familiar with it, we took it as oh, it's the soundtrack, and the soundtrack then did very, very well in the charts. So that period from like when Top Gun did take my breath away right up till sort of that period in the mid 90s film soundtracks did very, very well in the UK and it kind of went nosedived after Love is All Around by Wet Wet Wet. So that was probably the reason why it did well over here compared with, you know, america and other countries, I would say Alex, you're so polite you are, you never bite in or anything.
Speaker 1:Alex just sits there quietly, just. You know listening to everybody. You know contemplating, in fact, if any of us had the potential to be a really bad bond villain with the Alex.
Speaker 2:I have the cats for it, so that could work.
Speaker 1:You've got a lot of cats.
Speaker 2:Well, you seem to have a lot of cats. I just have two, but they're now relegated up to the upstairs. Now we have a dog, so anyway, going off a bit off topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you integrate that song? I did, and I think because it was a summer release, I think I think they got into the habit of basically there was a summer release and then it became things became number ones or did really well, and then you always have that memory over the summer of that. That's why I remember this particular one, because it was on the radio a lot over that period. But yeah, I think I think that's the thing. I remember the song more than I remember the film. But yeah, no, it was, it was. It did work. It's just a pity that the title sequences didn't quite hold up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it didn't do anything for me.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean it's fine and it's iconic, but didn't do anything for me in the song.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's better than some of the others.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, I'm not saying it's a bad song. Yeah, it didn't. It didn't fill me with a bond of sort of thrill like some of the songs do. No, that makes sense and kind of for me it was. It was middle of the road. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:They originally had asked Vic Flick, who played guitar for the original Monty Norman Bond theme, and Eric Clapton to write the theme song, but that was when the film was going by its original title, of license revoked and basically Cubby didn't like it and so it was called the narrator. Michael Walden actually co-wrote this song for Gladys, and yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 1:So all that finishes and Sam shows basically escapes and there's some really cool moments here. So we've got all the die hard references now, because you've got Michael Cayman, who stored die hard. Then you've got Robert what's His Face?
Speaker 2:Davy.
Speaker 1:Davy, yeah, he was. He was Agent Johnson. Then the other Agent Johnson was in this as well.
Speaker 5:No, robert Davy, was was Sanchez.
Speaker 2:Sanchez, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you're thinking about our friend from from Twin Peaks, aren't you?
Speaker 1:No, I mean die hard John In die hard Agent Johnson and Agent Johnson.
Speaker 5:Oh sorry, yes, the two pages.
Speaker 1:Yes, the black guy and the other guy.
Speaker 5:You're right.
Speaker 3:Sorry about that, but Davey the un yeah, and the unnecessary agent yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly, they're both in this film. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, they are, because I kept thinking to myself well, I've seen him before, when, when he, when he, when he says in his interrogation thing, he says two millions, whoever breaks me out.
Speaker 5:Well, the guy called Grand Elle Bush, which is an unusual name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was like, oh my God, it's agent, agent Johnson and agent Johnson from die hard. That's so cool. So, yeah, I think that's the end of my die hard references. Having said, that was the beginning of everyone's leaning forward in their chairs for loads of die hard references, but I'm not anymore. So, anyway, he escapes because he offers two million the guy who takes it is one that yeah, one kill if it takes it.
Speaker 1:He's lightest colleague in the CIA, not the guy that we thought, because, admit it, you thought the black guy was the one that was going to take bribe, didn't you?
Speaker 5:No.
Speaker 2:I always thought kill if it was the one, because he was really like brash and American and a bit of greasy. Yeah. So I kind of it wasn't a surprise when he was like, oh, hang on, he's going to be the one that turns, and he was.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I must say a deep character. I must say I felt that two million dollars was actually quite a small bounty to have him escape with. You have when he has the amount of money that he has. Two million is absolute chump change and for someone in the DEA we probably had a pension, probably would have been worth about 10 million.
Speaker 1:You know it's just that he wasn't just get rid of it. But I don't think he was DEA, though was he CIA.
Speaker 3:Right, okay, I mean, but yeah, but I mean, it's just they're trying to make you believe that you could sell someone out for just $2 million.
Speaker 5:So, bill, $2 million in 1989 is equivalent to that's a lot more to about $4.9 million today. So just imagine it's $5 million. Would you do it for $5 million?
Speaker 1:I would, I would totally do it.
Speaker 3:But the guy who's giving the bounties probably got about $100 million with all that cocaine and that operation that he's got. You know. I just felt that that was something that they probably needed to work on as well. Well, I mean, it's a little too much for that.
Speaker 1:It's good to me. It's good to me. All Colombian, whatever Mexican cartel drug lords who are listening to this podcast. If you ever get locked up and you need someone to break you out, $5 million will do it. I'm your guy. I'm your guy.
Speaker 5:Well, interestingly, they mentioned it at one point, I think it's what's the guy Is it Taylor Lange? He's kind of his finance guy that says that the operation cost $32 million to set up. So $5 million is quite a big chunk of the operation, really, isn't it, although that's you don't even have to translate as well. Interestingly, $32 million was also the budget for the film. I wonder if they did that on purpose, probably.
Speaker 1:But yeah, well, that was the other reason they moved filming and locations and everything to South America, to Mexico, because they needed to save money, because they were still paying all the loans that they had to take out to make Moonraker. So they're paying for interest while filming this, were they?
Speaker 5:Oh, my goodness, Wow, yeah they were still paying that off. Well then you think about it. If it got a lower budget then and they still managed to get the quality of the stunts out, that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a good-looking film.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're deviating a little bit here, as we always do, but it was a good-looking film. There was nothing in it. I know there were some, you know, in front of a screen moments here and there, but I mean it was pretty seamless overall. I thought the effects work was really really good. So, yeah, there we go. So, anyway, back to because we need to get into some of the violence now because Sanchez does escape, killifer helps him, and then they go and get Della and Felix. They take Felix we don't know what's happened with Della but Benicio del Toro, a very, very young Benicio del Toro, I think he was 20 years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, literally just looks like he's just out of sixth form.
Speaker 5:Which makes him the youngest Bond villain of the series. That's right he is. He's Freddie Mercury. What's?
Speaker 1:the guy's name.
Speaker 5:What's the actor's name? The guy I played recently? Oh, Rami Malik. Yeah, he was Rami Malik.
Speaker 1:Rami Malik. When he did that did no Time Story was like late thirties.
Speaker 5:Oh right, so yeah. So Benicio del Toro is the youngest Bond villain in their play. He's great in this, I thought.
Speaker 1:Really good. He's actually great in pretty much everything he does. To be fair, he's just got that kind of ex factor. So yeah, so they take Felix and they basically torture him and drop him into a sharp pit and he loses his leg.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it makes a killer for throw ups me. He can't cope watching it happening, so he runs away and throws up. Yeah, which? I thought was an interesting touch because it shows that he's not really as kind of a naturally bad guy compared to the rest. He's a restuarant looking down in interest and he runs off and tries to throw up, which is interesting kind of character.
Speaker 3:He was only in it for the money. He didn't think about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:David Hederson, who plays Felix Lutter. His wife was on set that day for that scene and the way he played it, you know when he says, you know I'll see you in hell or whatever, you know, because he decided to kind of go that route with it, which is like he's kind of accepted his fate and she basically left set because she couldn't stand to watch it. Wow, but yeah, it was definitely a OMG moment and I'd heard that there was a torture scene early on in the film. That is like nothing you've ever seen in these films before it. But even I wasn't quite ready for that. I mean, that was proper 80s violence in this one.
Speaker 1:We saw so much blood as well through this movie, when people got shot and Bond was bleeding as well and so on. Don't get me wrong. I loved all of it. It was great, but yeah, it was. It was, I think, after seven years of Roger Moore, it was quite a shock.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean the Roger Moore films. You had the. I mean you've heard of air kissing, is there's a lot of air punching? And then Roger Moore, where his fists are flying and it's sort of spin away before we touch them. And it was nice to see a bit of flesh and a bit of kind of physicality in this film.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean that was Dalton's Bond, wasn't it? Because Moore's Bond but Roger Moore himself was not a fan of violence. So you know, there's that scene in what's the bloody? Film called. For your eyes only when he kicks the car off the cliff. And he did not want to do that because he said it wasn't in keeping with his bond with his character, Not a vindictive bond, yeah, Whereas Dalton Dalton, with a fucking dropkick, that fucking like he had taken a flying leap into that car and dropped kicks off the cliff with his leap.
Speaker 5:Don't forget that the major theme of this film is revenge is a revenge film, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder if James Cameron took a few notes from this and then, you know, was influenced by some of the sequence in this for Terminator 2. Because I like that bit at the end where he's chasing off the Sanchez in the all tanker and then he just punches through the glass after it gets shot out and then he climbs onto the hood of his truck and then he grabs onto the back of the old tanker and gets onto that. It's like a crap T1000, wasn't it Relentless? Yeah, absolutely relentless. Does anyone know if the shark was real?
Speaker 5:They can't I mean they can't. They're white sharks, aren't big on being kept in captivity. They tend to suicide, don't they? They tend to sort of headbutt the tanks and kill themselves. I wonder if it was either another shark or a puppet to some sort. I think that was a tiger shark. I think it's a tiger shark. Yeah, I don't think it was big enough to be a great white. That's the only thing I noticed.
Speaker 1:I think it was a tiger shark that was my instinct. I'm going to look that up while you guys carry on. Okay, what?
Speaker 5:happens next? Well, at the same time, I mean, bond goes back. Doesn't he to find he goes to the airport, doesn't he to go to his next mission in Istanbul?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's about to go, isn't he?
Speaker 5:And then he finds out.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So he speaks to the lady and she says, well, that'd mean I'm spoken or whatever, and as she turns around he's gone and he's driving back. And one of my favourite bits of the film is when Bond pulls up to Felix's house and there's a mother and a son who are extras in the film, who, oh look, there's Timothy Dalton and she grabs the boy to run for because I don't think they hit their cue and got passing the car on the scene and they both giggle and run off. So it's painfully obvious they know they're in a Bond film. I love that bit.
Speaker 5:It'll sort of yes, it was funny because it was completely out of character for any of the characters. But yeah, he goes back in, doesn't he? And, as you say, bobby, more blood. He can see blood on the floor and follows the trail into Della's room and she's lying on the bed with a gunshot wound in her chest. And that's the scene that really got me, when he realised that she's dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's also when Venetia Del Toro tells Felix, you know, I think he tells him you know, what have you done to my wife? Or don't do anything to her, whatever? And he's like don't worry, we gave her a nice honeymoon. Yeah, that was really creepy, because it suggests that, well, I don't even want to say it was horrible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot darker than.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know yeah. You don't want to think about that sort of thing, do you? But I guess that's the 15 certificate again, isn't it? It's the implied violence as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So then Bond teams up with Shalkie, doesn't he? Well doesn't?
Speaker 5:he find some information on Felix's computer's being uploaded or taken.
Speaker 1:He finds it's body he seesdoes he not see the location of the bar or whatever?
Speaker 5:it is. Oh, that's where he finds the American lady, a CI girl, I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and Bouvier and Bouvier, yeah, but theybefore that they discover the marine research centre, which, well, yeah, what's his face? The crest guy is a complete.
Speaker 5:It's amazing, is it Gilcrest? Gilcrest.
Speaker 1:Gilcrest, gilcrest.
Speaker 2:Gilcrest, gilcrest, gilcrest, yeah, gilcrest, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Another character taken from that same short story about the guy that Bond is helping. He's looking for some big game fish and likes to whip his wife with a stingray, so Bond ends up killing him, as he should. It was a tiger shark, by the way. What was a tiger shark? Cool, I know my sharks, so yeah, so Bond basically knocks on the door and Milton Crest opens the door and then he says he's from the usual places, from United Shipping or whatever, united Agents Shipping or something.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's the same cover story that's been used since the Sean Connery days and he says they're interested in procuring a, whatever the Latin name for a great white shark is. Now obviously I mean that should have given it away. I think that told Bond that this was a phony front, because you obviously can't keep great white sharks in captivity. Anyone knows that?
Speaker 1:who's seen that 3D documentary that came out in 1984 called Rules and Reads and if Milton Crest knew anything about sharks, then he would have known that Bond was a phony as well. But he didn't. I'll conquer it on car carriers. That's it. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4:And that's done.
Speaker 1:And so Bond and Sharky go back that night to infiltrate the Marine Center. And then the dolphin gets into all sorts of troubles, doesn't he? He finds drugs and maggots, drugs hidden in maggots, and electric eels, and yeah, it's all going on.
Speaker 2:It gets caught.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. Do they put them in the back of their neck or something?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, he gets knocked out doesn't he?
Speaker 1:Yeah, can electric eels actually kill you if you jump?
Speaker 5:into a thing with them? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:So I wonder how electric eels work.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a stereotype.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is a shock, but it's not designed for humans, it's for smaller animals. It's all about self-protection, isn't it?
Speaker 5:Yeah, here's a question Now. Did anybody else wonder why Sharky was called Sharky when he was so terrified of sharks?
Speaker 2:That sounds like British humour to me.
Speaker 5:You know, you got to a really big fat bloke and call him Skinny. I mean, it just seems like a strange kind of name for someone who, when he first sees one in that sort of metal grill under Bond's feet, starts. And there's this lovely scene where he's sitting in his boat and he starts to look around going oh hold on, are there sharks all around me? It just seems a very strange name for a shark, a fob.
Speaker 1:What's even weirder is when that shark sort of stumbles him, he's sat there waiting for Bond in a rubber dinghy. Yeah, it's kind of the last sort of type of boat that you want to be in if there's sharks around. Really, I had got out of that thing like straight away and taken my chances on the metal grates. So yeah, I think it was just Deliverer. It was in the Guffin so that they could put that, so that the evil guy could put that joke in about, you know, killing a name. Oh, and his name was Sharky as well, so yeah, so.
Speaker 1:Bond does get caught. So basically, at the research centre, sanchez is basically hiding all his cocaine there, isn't he? And then all the kind of smuggling operation which is very, very complex. It's not a simplistic villain, he's got a lot going on. You know the way that he sells his drugs using the invad gelical thing and the way that you know the cocaine's hidden at the research centre and then the plan comes in to take the drugs and drop the money off and all of that.
Speaker 1:But Bond's basically in the next sequence where he escapes. He manages to single-handedly not only destroy their drugs but also just make off with a shed load of their money as well, and we get another action sequence. So there's a bit of underground stuff where they underwater stuff, where they find some of the leftover toys that the film crew from 1967 left after finishing Thunderball, and so they have a play around with that stuff. And then Bond manages to get away from the underwater skirmish by harpooning a water plane or whatever it is, and then he proceeds to water ski behind it. That's a good start Without water skis, yeah.
Speaker 5:So that was it. Yeah, by the way. Oh, yeah, I mean it was a thing you can do that yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, obviously a guy did it because that was, you know, the stuntman, was some world championship barefoot water skier. And then he manages to get onto the plane, dispensed with the two guys that are in there, and then he has a native casual of a sudden to fund his little vendetta mission. But I thought as an action sort of sequence, I thought it was pretty cool, it was pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 5:But it was pretty cool. It's quite funny as well when the second guy gets chucked down. You just go into the sea. That's quite funny.
Speaker 1:Well, did none of this get your juices flowing? Or were you just totally bored through this entire film?
Speaker 3:I just I think all that I kept thinking about throughout this film was that at this point during this period when they made this film, it just the genre at this point seemed a little bit tired and I think they tried to do a little bit too much with the violence, things like that. I personally didn't think it was as violent to justify it being a 15. I thought that it was as violent as Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and that was. That was a PG. So I just feel like they they were trying to cut.
Speaker 3:I think they tried to create some hype by saying this is going to be a 15. And I think there was probably some extra disappointment from the people that actually saw it. Maybe they thought it was going to be more violent than it was. And at the time there was a lot of very violent films because Arnold Schwarzenegger was making loads of films at this point and they were all really violent. And I just think this I think it missed the mark in a number of areas, but there was some fantastic stunts and fantastic special effects that you just couldn't recreate now with CGI.
Speaker 1:No. I think you're right yeah that's very true, very well said.
Speaker 5:I think we're getting to the point now, for well, people are starting to spot CGI and are annoyed by it, and I think we're going to see a resurgence of more physical films. I was reading an article about the production designer of Barbie and you've all seen from the trailer all the you know the scenes of the Barbie city, the plastic and pink. None of that was CGI. It was all done physically on set in a studio in London, and I think it's really good that the filmmakers are starting to say well, you know, our film audience is intelligent, they're going to spot it when it's fake. Let's do it for real. And so I think that's some of these earlier films. Bond films will hold up better long time I think long term because they are done physically. I don't know how you feel about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is kind of the. Yeah, I think this is kind of the last period just while you know the likes of Jim Henson is still alive where you got real mechanical special effects and like after sort of post sort of Jim Henson. There's less and less of that and it relies more heavily on computers and this film. You needed to have skilled stuntmen and skilled drivers and skilled pilots and people that were willing to take some bruises and some knocks, because there was a lot of things that could have gone wrong and someone could have got seriously hurt in this film. Yeah, well, I mean people willing to. Yeah lighter.
Speaker 5:When he jumped out of the helicopter he hurt his leg so badly he limped the rest of the film, the rest of the film, filming of his scenes. It's interesting I still think it's really when you look at like that. We'll talk about it when it happens. But there's a particular scene in one of the Pierce Brosnan films that's become universally mocked for its dodgy special effects. You know the one, I mean, don't you? Yes, yeah, I think it's really because people might have forgotten about it. I can see Phil. Phil's actually listeners. Phil's actually physically. He looks like he's about to throw up. He's physically vibrate to you in revulsion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm going to do an effort, mcgill, in the second hand.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I think the physical effects are very good in this film, and that's probably down to budget limitations, I imagine.
Speaker 1:I think we're dying out of the day. It's got one of the, I thought a very strong opening sequence that sets up what could have been a very, very good film if they kind of stuck with it, maybe left Bond in prison a bit longer, and so on. Yeah, but yeah, all that CGI nonsense and the end is just We'll come to that we will come to that in a few months.
Speaker 4:So, see, it never works, it never goes well when we try to do blocks.
Speaker 5:So he was putting his hand in a tray of fake plastic maggots that was being made to vibrate. So it looked alive, and then I think after that.
Speaker 1:No, we've got through all of that. He's escaped now, so he's got his brain full of money. Is he going on the boat? He basically. So he's stolen five million dollars and I think he's also killed Killifer using the shot time. That's right. Yeah, that was used for the writer.
Speaker 5:There's the scene where he meets Bouvet, isn't it? In the grill house, the bar where it's all like your local drug dealers and your local bad boys, and he meets Bouvet with a shotgun on the table. Yeah, the barrel head bar at Bimini, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:I think it was yeah, and so I didn't really know what to think about Carrie Lowell because, again, I guess I didn't really pay much attention at the time when all of this was going on back in 1989.
Speaker 3:I mean, she was a model at the time. She wasn't an actress and I felt like they didn't really give her any great lines to deliver. She did her best. But she came into our room and she did Law and Order and that's what all of us all I've ever known her for is her as a lawyer. She's very accomplished in that. But in this it's a great way to start because you can only go up in terms of performance. But she looked fantastic. But in terms of how she was written, she didn't really question the writing as much because she didn't know any better. She did what she did with the lines that she had and that was all she could do. She looked great.
Speaker 5:I'm going to come to the writing and how Bond's relationship with her and her relationship with Lupe later on. I'm going to come to that because I had problems with that. But what did you think of her hair in the bar Was a wig, wasn't it? Yeah, I had problems with it. When I first saw her, I thought there was something wrong with her hair. I thought she had hair loss or something, because her hairline was really strange. And it's only later on, when I looked into it, that she had short hair initially and was wearing a wig and they built in the cutting hair scene so she could then do the rest of the film with her natural hair. I found the hair a bit weird when I first saw it, and it was interesting then to look at the information about it and see if it was a wig.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought she was a very strong Bond girl, because I don't recall at any point in the film Bond saving her, but she saves him multiple times, right, alex?
Speaker 2:Yeah, she didn't need it. She was really assertive and independent and holds up quite well in the modern age. So yeah, she was pretty nice. Yeah, so I do think her writing was the big sufferer. You could tell that she just wasn't given very much from the writing of the scenes.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, from here they then travel to the Republic of Isthmus Such a weird name.
Speaker 5:Well, it's based on the Panama, isn't it, the Panama?
Speaker 4:Is it?
Speaker 5:I know that Robert Davy, wasn't he from somewhere called Isthmus originally?
Speaker 1:He was method acting through this entire thing, so he was in character when not filming as well.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I can see that actually, because he's just like generally kind of an interesting guy, isn't he?
Speaker 1:So yeah, there we go. So Isthmus is where they end up, which is basically, as I understood it, this Republic is owned by him, right? It's his hotel, it's his casino, it's his bank. So Bond's goes and deposits is five million in there, which I thought was hilarious because it's basically just the guy's own money in his own bank. Was this before or after Bond's resigns? And we have the senior, honest Hemingway's house.
Speaker 5:He resigned after meeting Em in that house, wasn't he?
Speaker 1:It was Hemingway's house, wasn't it?
Speaker 5:It was Hemingway's house because there was a Hemingway reference in it at one point Return to arms, or something, wasn't it? I'm sure I saw a Hemingway reference in there, but that was a while ago. Because then he runs off into the bushes and they all chase him, don't they? That's ages ago.
Speaker 1:That's the last time that we see what's his name is Em, isn't it? Because that's it, because then Judy Dench takes over after this. Robert Brown, sorry, and Caroline Bliss actually is Em. She's never seen again after this, but she wasn't as money penny, money penny. She wasn't very memorable, it was money penny. Anyway, we get the wonderful Samantha Bond.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean money-pilling. This film was better than the last film, living Daylights, but and she did help because she got a cue on the case, didn't she? She did, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But this is where I thought the plot got really interesting and I could see that it was influenced by Yojimbo, which also was remade into that Bruce Willis film. Was it no Man's Land, where you have a stranger wandering into a town where there's two warring factions? And he basically infiltrates both of them and then plants the seeds both sides so they end up destroying each other, and that's basically kind of what happens here. Wilson admitted that his writing was this aspect of the plot was influenced by that film.
Speaker 5:I thought this was the best bit of the plot, though the way Bond played everyone off each other, I enjoyed most about the film. I think Exactly.
Speaker 1:Although there is one bit when Bond is being interviewed by Sanchez and Sanchez says so what are you a problem, sol? When he asked him why he has a gun, he said well, you can never be too careful in my line of work.
Speaker 5:What was that? Was that meant to be Welsh Like a Stalin or something that was?
Speaker 1:very.
Speaker 2:Welsh.
Speaker 1:And Sanchez says what are you a problem solver? And he's like no more of a problem eliminator. And then they all laugh. Well, bolton keeps laughing after everybody else and it's kind of really awkward. But yeah, you're right, I really liked the way this was kind of set up and we never really seen Bond do this before, because previously in Bond films it was very clear cut it was that's the bad person and Bond has to stop him. That's it, and they're going to be on a collision course, whereas this was. We'd never seen Bond actually infiltrate an organisation, go under cut. We'd never seen Bond be a spy.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know, it's much more like a video game, isn't it? This one really?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's the Bond goes. That's the next episode, John.
Speaker 2:That's the. You're pre-empting it.
Speaker 1:Sorry, yeah 16, 17 films in and, finally, bond actually does his job. So so yeah, there we go. We haven't talked about Lupe at all, and she has popped up a few times already, paid by Talisa Soto. Now, for some reason, I do remember him from childhood. Also remember him from 1995's Mortal Kombat. Yes, that's right, and there was another Mortal Kombat alumni as well the Chinese agent.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think, I think.
Speaker 1:Or were they Japanese?
Speaker 5:Agent Johnson, grand Elbush, who was also a street fighter. They must have gone to all the video fighting. You know they're fighting video games as a recruiting. They can't do this film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, so yeah, anyway, lupe.
Speaker 5:Yeah, she's very pretty lady, isn't she?
Speaker 1:This was when I wrote my Diana Riggs number one question mark comment.
Speaker 5:I think she has analarma vibes, wasn't she in this? I mean, she's not quite as capable as her, but that kind of sultry Latino, look to her, I thought, was you know well, well, well, picked for a Bond film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think where she was she would lose out to Diana Riggs. I think that when in trouble, diana Riggs would basically kick the shit out of someone Backflip and a dress soon.
Speaker 5:Not care about that, basically.
Speaker 1:And she just wouldn't, because there was a lot of O James, o James in this and I love him. What the hell.
Speaker 4:Sorry, now I'm going to get forward a bit.
Speaker 1:What the hell was that about?
Speaker 5:I mentioned this earlier on. I had real problems with the sexual politics in this film. I mean I just, I'm sorry, it just confused me completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally Anyway, sorry.
Speaker 5:Let's start syndrome, perhaps Best Stockholm syndrome, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe it's weird, so I'm totally lost as to where we're at.
Speaker 5:So he's been in and ingratiate himself with Sanchez and spoken to a few of his henchmen and he's looked over at the other side of the building to see this good sniping point. He's looked at the glass and the windows and its armor lights and I think he's then Meets up with yeah. He goes back to the hotel.
Speaker 1:He goes back to the hotel and I said, oh, your uncle's here, yeah. I let him up into your room. What the hell Like.
Speaker 4:Seriously, Anyway but I knew straight away.
Speaker 1:We knew it was Q right. I mean, come on, Because we hadn't seen Desmond Llewellyn and he was, and Monty mentioned Q, didn't she? Well, yeah, because she calls him, doesn't she? Yeah, she's a Q branch, please.
Speaker 5:We need to go over to Alex now, Don't we I mean Q's brought out his gadget bags.
Speaker 1:Alex Q brought a goodie bag with him that was practically full of shit, to be quite honest. Take it away, alex.
Speaker 2:In all of the films, like it's been a key plot point and this was really superfluous. It was almost like you know, here's all this lovely stuff, but I know that you're just going to sort of just smash a window and then garot someone with.
Speaker 5:Hold on, though there was, there were some pretty cool things in that bag there were what was cool.
Speaker 3:OK so.
Speaker 5:I really like the laser X-ray camera. You can look through things and burn things with the laser.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, that was hilarious Carolina pissed herself laughing when the Polaroid comes out with the three skeletons.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was so funny, but do you know why it was funny?
Speaker 5:Because the third skeleton, the one in the middle, was of a painting, a painting wouldn't have a skeleton.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's what Carolina said? I think something happened.
Speaker 5:Whoever they gave the job to in the Special Effects Department to paint the X-ray, hadn't been told that the middle person was actually a painting and just gave him a skeleton as well, was there any Sorry.
Speaker 2:Alex, it was good. Oh no, it was funny. So you had a cigarette packet detonator to go with the plastic exposives in the toothpaste.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was the toothpaste called Dentonite, dentonite.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So did they come up with these names and then work backwards or something?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what else did we have? We had the laser camera. You've done that Exploding alarm clock yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, so sorry. What the fuck was that about? Right that alarm clock. So it was 1989. Surely you would have been using a digital alarm clock, not that crusty old thing that can never wake up anyone who uses it. Yeah, guaranteed to make anyone who walks into their room and sees that fucking antique thing on the side of their bed Think that's a bomb.
Speaker 5:The gun wasn't there. The gun that was a camera, that was like really old, yeah, so the Hasselblad camera yeah that was the Hasselblad camera, which was basically turned into a gun.
Speaker 2:So you had that. You had the Camerbund that had turned into a repelling down, so you can tell the magic, the magic Camerbund that had much more rope in it than you expected.
Speaker 5:It fit around his waist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the thing is it looked really slight when he was wearing it and then, when it would still didn't look too bad, it looked quite neat.
Speaker 5:And then you just looked like no, that couldn't 100 meters of rope down the building or something, and I'm wondering if perhaps what you actually saw in the round is about was like a bungee for a bike rack or anything else. It did feel that way. She doesn't like it.
Speaker 1:It did feel bad like that?
Speaker 4:What else do we have? We had another Philips. Because especially the fact that it's from Like it always seems to be that the like.
Speaker 2:The warfare things seem to be sponsored by.
Speaker 5:Oh, was that the detonator? The detonator thing like a black sort of black tablet with a radar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was the one, because you had the cigarette packet was connected, was was connected to the explosives, and then this was the remote.
Speaker 1:Right and the cigarette is connected to the explosive thingy. The explosive thing is connected to the white thingy.
Speaker 2:It's really weird.
Speaker 3:Oh, Bouvier also had a bulletproof vest as well. Oh, that's right. Yeah, in the beginning. Yeah, she did have that.
Speaker 5:I quite like the the manta ray camouflage thing, the bondage in the water, that was cool.
Speaker 1:That was very Roger Moore, wasn't it? Yeah, but how ridiculous is that? Right so crests gets called by the captain of his boat you need to come and take it. You need to come and take a look at this, right. So he goes, he shows him this thing on a monitor and he's like it's a man to write, like you're the fucking captain of a ship and you don't know what a man to write is. Sorry, is it?
Speaker 5:Is that what a man to write. I mean the guy who owns his own like shark aquarium sales shop.
Speaker 1:No, he knew what a man to write. Look like the captain of his boat. I saw it on the monitor and, if you know exactly, he didn't know what a man to write.
Speaker 5:Like I mean that was a bit cheap. It is. I never seen one.
Speaker 1:No, but do you think?
Speaker 3:But how do you think the captain did that? Because he knew that this guy was trying to with his with the villains girlfriend. He knew he'd get killed If anything happens. He said look, you just got to come see this and that way maybe because he was there's a whole bunch of fanfiction here.
Speaker 5:You can write about this. So a whole sub sort of TV series on that about all the villains drive around in. Yeah, what about the villains families, do they?
Speaker 1:what was Milton Kress thinking? You could do a whole fanfiction just on that.
Speaker 5:That would be quite thought out Was there was one gadget I'm pretty sure had been recycled from another film as well.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 5:But it was at the end when Q was doing near the sort of later end of the film. Q was dressed as a Mexican street sweeper and he had a broom with an arrow. I'm pretty sure they use that in living daylights. Was it one of the Operatives outside the mansion where the milk gets the milk bombs get thrown?
Speaker 2:So that was a rake, not a broom.
Speaker 5:It just felt it had the same sort of vibes, didn't?
Speaker 4:it yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, definitely, because the air came out of the top.
Speaker 5:Just the same way and the center bit opened up for them for the actual, the mic and the button.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure that Q just throws it into a bush like it does, isn't it? Yeah, like really expect. And he's the one that's always telling Bond to bring the gadgets back undamaged and in one piece, because it's all very expensive, and he just goes and chucks this thing into a bush.
Speaker 5:Doing exactly what you always told Bond not to do Exactly Crazy.
Speaker 1:But anyway, so it's Q who's the uncle in the bedroom, and we were very I was very happy to see him and I was like, oh, he's come to help bond out without him knowing presumably, and stopping Bond getting his getting his end away in the room because he had to share the twin room, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, that was, that was. That was quite funny, wasn't it Because?
Speaker 5:that's giving you. It's like Bond can be to update, by the way.
Speaker 1:But Bond, in just a second. But Bond, bond sort of looks over at Pan and she's kind of getting the bed ready with the intention of shutting the door on him. Yeah, but in that moment it's like on Tolton's face, it's like he looks at Q, looks at, looks at Beauvoir Threesome.
Speaker 5:But she no, no, no.
Speaker 4:Bobby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then it's. But then it's such a charming moment when, when, when he turns around to Q needs, I hope you don't bloody snore Q, because that's that's exactly what, like I mean, if we had to share a room, unexpected, with each other, that's exactly what you would say, right To you. I hope you didn't snore. And then they bump up for like right. Ok, boncom, boncomiter, john, over to you. I should get some sound effects for this, ok.
Speaker 5:I'm a horror to think of what sort of sound effect you have.
Speaker 2:But it's time for the boncomiter.
Speaker 5:Ok, good, ok, good. Well, only two, and there's a reason for this. So in the whole film only two, and that is Lupe and Pam.
Speaker 5:But there's a reason for this, apparently, and apparently at the time the AIDS, the AIDS vibe the AIDS is a big thing in the late 80s and OK, careful here, because history is Phil's department. Yeah Well, phil can back me up on this, but because of AIDS at the time, I think the producers are very keen to show Bond being a little bit less promiscuous in this film than normal, which was such a wasted opportunity for a 15 rated film. All the films this this was the film that could have had a proper sex scene and they didn't because of AIDS. I'm not entirely sure what that message is, alex, he's just sent into the chat, but he's just a team of American World Police.
Speaker 3:Oh I.
Speaker 2:Shatter out on there.
Speaker 1:We'll just see it in your which place?
Speaker 2:But they did.
Speaker 1:They did. They didn't put a sex warning about AIDS at the end of the film, but in the credits, did you notice? They have the tobacco warning.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, which is again I kind of are running, but yeah, so he has two rather chaste encounters which we don't really see much of. We get as much as maybe a side boob from from Lupe. She opens the door to a room, basically. You know, I only noticed that as part of my job as official bank account on this podcast, otherwise, of course I've got a bonus one. So you got that again. Oh, a bonus.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've got a way. Wait, wait, wait, you've got a bonus.
Speaker 1:And it's it's time For a bonus bank.
Speaker 2:Oh dear. He fills up one of the statues on the way down when he's repelling.
Speaker 5:The boot on the boot. Alex, I'm a bit concerned. If you think that that counts, it's not really a book, but I felt like there's so little to talk about with around there.
Speaker 1:Then, yeah, that was that was it.
Speaker 2:You can do the sting at the end now, Bobby, so like because we're finished now. We're finished with the booking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't got an exit, stinger. Well, what was your?
Speaker 2:day in post. I'm not able to pull out.
Speaker 1:That's right, so yeah anyway, there we go. So he gets a bit of unauthorized assistance from Q, which is lovely. So he gets, gets on the on the on, on the wave crest again, because he's already been on this ship, hasn't he? To disrupt Sanchez's latest drug shipment?
Speaker 5:Well, money ship, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Is that what really happens?
Speaker 5:When does he? Kill the, that's how you got the five million, isn't it? No after this he goes. He doesn't. He try and go up into the roof and shoot Sanchez through the window. After blowing the window up and learns about.
Speaker 2:No, he does his with, he does do, he does that, but then he also. So he learns about the whole operation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, and then he goes back to, so he returns the money and sets up crest.
Speaker 5:That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's after his this destination.
Speaker 1:Sorry, because he's been on and off that boat so many times I'm getting confused, but now this is the time that he gets on to set up.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we've got the whole meeting with Asian bankers. You've got the assassination through the window. You got him you know, because Alex mentioned about him climbing down the statues with the boobs.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 5:And then he gets kidnapped again by what turns out to be the Hong Kong DA people.
Speaker 1:That's right, the Chinese oh no, yeah, that's it, because he was going to, he was going to assassinate Sanchez.
Speaker 5:And then the gun gets, the sniper rifle gets knocked out of his hands and so he looks like he's like he's a villain still, because when Sanchez turns up he's tied up and being tortured by the Chinese, and so it really strengthens bonds kind of status, as you know, a problem solver and not not working for the government anymore, and so on.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's it. He's definitely on the way that's him. The way that the Chinese DA agents get slaughtered is quite brutal. And then there's the last agent standing, the lady, and you know he says to her let me take you alive. Now the guy comes in and just machine guns her down. It's like what Well?
Speaker 5:he says that because later on he he gets caught and he takes a sign. I feel as if he's off to the mouth. He does, he does.
Speaker 1:Does when.
Speaker 5:Bond then goes back to Sanchez's kind of lair which has his usual kind of waterfalls and pools and things, and goes up the finicular with with Lou Pay to the bedroom and so on. Yeah that's before he goes back on the boat. That's why it's confusing, because he's got he goes back to the boat after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's it. And then he plants yeah, because I remember. Yeah, because then Q is the one operating the boat, because Shafi's dead by this point in time. Yeah, and then he's got that kind of basket and I was like, oh, what's in that? And then bonds, basically it's the money, isn't it? It's the five million dollars or whatever's left of it.
Speaker 5:That's that funny scene where he's taking the money out of the bank and, seeing your Montalego, who's the bank, the bank manager is like oh, oh, you're taking with, you're taking the money away again, are you Like all bank managers, when someone makes a massive withdrawal?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, does that qualify as a bond?
Speaker 5:I think you're really I think you're really I think you're really.
Speaker 2:That's on Tondra, that's double.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let's talk about let's talk about him framing crests Brilliant as well as being brilliant and very clever, and a lot of device borrowed from an old Japanese film or something the death of crests. Because this is where Robert Davy, where Robert Davy Sanchez is actually quite terrifying because he's got manners. He keeps saying loyalty matters more to him than money, right? Yeah, so he has the ability to be very charismatic and very genteel with people who are in his favor, but as soon as he suspects that or feels that someone's going against him, yeah, he's utterly fricking. Terrifying because the way that he goes for crests locks him in the compression chamber and then just turns that thing up and we were literally on the sofa. I don't know about you guys, but we were like, oh my effing got. Like, oh my God that he's going to like, is he going to explode, implode, what the hell?
Speaker 5:I don't even know how pressure works, but more film was it.
Speaker 1:It was living that diet it was living that diet with the air pressure bullet.
Speaker 5:Yeah Fett Cotto, when he blows up at the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminded me of that. Yeah, but that was a balloon, this was a cast of the actor, but it, I mean, it was pretty good that gave it 15, really as well, I think. Well, that was a soft version because they actually had to cut that, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut cut to get to what we saw.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but apparently the original part of that scene and the head exploding is pretty graphic, like it's really bad. The BBFC were hovering over giving it an 18. And so this had to go back into the editing studio so many times to literally cut, cut, cut within a millimetre of its likes to get that 15 certificate. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 3:Interesting thing about the this was the first time that his head exploded in a film the actor that played that guy because later on in Star Trek Interaction his head explodes in that one as well.
Speaker 5:Or get all stretches as well. They got that whole species of cosmic surgery, yeah.
Speaker 3:So maybe they just had the footage from that and they just used that insurrection.
Speaker 5:Tell you what, Philip. It also reminded me of that amazing scene in Big Trouble in Little China, One of the villains exploding in the corner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you just got to suspend your disbelief for that film, that's for sure. It's hilarious. They would never make a film like that again, to shame. It just lives in my memory. I couldn't show that to my children. I would love to show that Big Trouble in Little China to Daniel or something, but he just wouldn't get it. He'd be like what's this? It just wouldn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so basically this little thing is what gets Bond really tight with Sanchez. The information that he's given Sanchez has been very good up to this point.
Speaker 5:He's been very lucky, don't you think, Bobby? All the?
Speaker 1:way through the film.
Speaker 5:Extremely Up until the cult place that he hadn't seen Benito Dottaro's Henchman yet.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right. I think, again, that was pretty deliberate in terms of the writing, because obviously, if they crossed paths earlier on, then you wouldn't have had everything else that's happened to happen. But then it's coming, isn't it? Because Sanchez then takes Bond to his base, which is basically I read somewhere that it was something to do with, like it was an athletics or an Olympics thing- that's why you're in Newton's Palace, isn't it Basically in the film. It's basically a religious cult, isn't it?
Speaker 5:It's a front, isn't it, for the negotiations?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Because that's how they do all their deals and I thought that was really clever. You know, like the religious donations.
Speaker 5:Quite believable, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the sidekick businessman, whatever his name was. Oh God, what was the Wall Street guy's name?
Speaker 5:Was it Taylor Large or Lunge or something, something like that.
Speaker 1:Truman Lodge Truman Lodge, that's it, which you thought was the name of some Airbnb place. But anyway, because he's like I think we can get up to a thousand to key for this now. And he's like, yeah, well, done, very good. And then you kind of learn through the donation process. You know our chapter in Washington or wherever is donated 5,000. And it's like, oh okay, so you just sold all 500 or whatever you know. You sold 500 kilos at a thousand. Wow, that's half a million or whatever. I'm actually rubbish at this time of night, but I thought that was all very, very clever. But Pam Bouvié, who's previously been told by Bond and we've missed out a lot of stuff with her that we shouldn't have done for any time getting on, she's followed him there after having been told by Bond very deliberately to stay out of it.
Speaker 5:Now, but still showing how capable she is actually Extremely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she manages to disable the cult leader in his creepy layer. It's like he takes her into that bedroom and it's like it's soundproof. No one in the outside can hear us.
Speaker 5:It's kind of like Aztec Hell's in there. It's like it could be. Maybe they borrowed one of the Indiana Jones sets for this bit. I don't know, because it's just so sort of weird.
Speaker 2:He was played by Carson Wayne Newton.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's a singer, right? Yeah, he's well known. He's performed in Las Vegas for years. He was called Professor.
Speaker 5:Joe Butch, wasn't he in his film?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. But yeah, so it was really funny. So it's like a classic cameo really.
Speaker 1:Apparently he always wanted to be in a Bond film, so he begged them for a role and they said, yeah, fine, you can do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good role.
Speaker 1:So now the plot thickens, because now we learn how they're moving the drugs. So basically, sanchez's scientists have worked out a way to dissolve the crack into crack Crack is another word for cocaine, by the way. People just like that in petrol and then they basically disguise it as fuel, and that's how they're transporting it in the tankers to the Asian drug dealers.
Speaker 5:If it's in fuel, then it's not going to get picked up by dog sniffers and things.
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:No, that's right.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 5:So a big plot point out here and is that when he was having an argument with Pam about telling her to don't get involved and stay out of this, she said well, do you know about the stingers? Yeah, it's quite important at this stage, isn't it? Because there's a scene where he's hanging on to a circumvair belt with drugs falling around him into a big chewing chewing more like the grind. The grind is the drugs up into the petrol, and you got Del Toro trying to kill him and kick him into it. And Sanchez has got him on the circumvair belt and he's about to kill him. And Bond says what about the stingers? And that kind of holds Bond off from being killed straight away. He uses it as a kind of a gambit, doesn't he?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you see them right at the end, don't you?
Speaker 5:Yeah, what Sanchez discovers is another one of his henchmen not being loyal to him, basically.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah because he then tears off, and it's the helicopter pilot guy who's basically innocently doing what he said he was doing, which was making sure those stinger missiles are safe.
Speaker 5:He agreed to sell them off to someone else, didn't he. Oh yeah, the hella was backstabbing him as well. Oh okay, no, I don't think he was.
Speaker 1:I think he was innocently doing like he was keeping them safe.
Speaker 5:No, because there's a scene where he's dashing to get all the missiles onto the helicopter and then when he realizes Sanchez is there, he kind of his whole manner changes. Oh yeah, I was just making sure these were safe. So he made a deal to sell them off to someone else. And that's what he was doing to make some money out of him. Why would he escape with all the missiles? You just leave, wouldn't you? Surely? What do you think, boys? Do you think I'm wrong?
Speaker 2:There's so much plot.
Speaker 5:I know.
Speaker 2:I know that they kind of wanted to. I almost Pam a bit more, but there's no need.
Speaker 1:Well, she was needed, because Bond would have died like seven times by now if it wasn't for him.
Speaker 2:No, but you have her in there, but I didn't need another plot point as to why she was involved. I agree. It was already covered. So yeah, it was a strange one, I really think that?
Speaker 1:No, I think it was double crossing him probably, I don't think. I read it as that he was. Basically it was carrying on that whole All the little seeds of doubt that Bond was planting, because by now Sanchez is so paranoid that his people are against him that anything that looks slightly odd to him, yeah, I mean the way he kills the guy, I mean with a thought, lift truck or whatever.
Speaker 5:That's interesting, though, isn't it? You see, a difference to us.
Speaker 1:I honestly did think that he was genuinely doing what he said he was doing, but Sanchez is just so enraged and so paranoid by this point and it goes back to, you know, your Jimbo, also the Bruce Willis one that I can't remember the name of, that I've seen like seven times, I think Christopher Walken's in that one as well.
Speaker 4:I actually really liked it. It was a really good film.
Speaker 1:I thought it was a really good film, paul Bruce Willis. So yeah, there we go, but we get another horrible death because Benicio then gets his comeuppance, doesn't he? In the giant grinder. So that happens, and then the base starts blowing up. So now Bond has basically brought the entire operation down and destroyed it, and then Sanchez basically escapes and gets in the last tanker that's remaining and tries to get away with it. And then Bond goes after him, doesn't he? Why are you looking?
Speaker 4:confused Tom.
Speaker 5:Because I think you're right, bobby, I don't think he was double crossing Sanchez.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think he was honestly. I think he was just really innocent. He was like boss, I'm just you know, I'm just. I'm just putting those weights, keeping them safe, because the whole place is going to shit. No, you're not. You're taking them from me. You're against me as well. I'm going to ram you with a four-wheeled truck.
Speaker 5:Felix Leiter gave Pam a letter at his wedding you know when she's in the office with him yeah, granting hella immunity if he got the stingers back. He initially went for the deal but panicked and reneged on the deal after James Bond's failed assassination attempt on Sanchez's life. So I think he had planned to double cross him but then wasn't going to because Sanchez is still alive. So what he's now doing, I think, is being loyal but, as you say, kind of a bit backfired on him. He looks sneaky and so Sanchez thought that's just like him on a yeah.
Speaker 1:We didn't talk about earlier on, when he's with the president of oh presidency Just the most, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he comes back at the end, doesn't he?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he is the son of the guy that laid Karim Bey from Russia. With love, that uncle. There you go.
Speaker 5:So we've got the it's. When Sanchez says to him.
Speaker 1:You're only president for life. I thought that was so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was good.
Speaker 1:That was nice. So, anyway, we're back to the final chase between the T1000 and and Arnie, he's a bit like that, isn't he? He is kind of relentless. But I kind of like that because it's like Bond is like just basically red-lying. He's a mushroom cloud laying mother fester in the red zone. The explosions were really good in this Extremely.
Speaker 5:That's because they were not CGI and I'm sure we've talked about this before in a podcast. I follow some YouTubers, VFX artists, and they did a whole half-now video on how bad explosions are in a film and how badly represented fires in films in terms of the brightness and the colour. But because they're using real pyros in this film, they were really good. They weren't fake at all.
Speaker 1:So I've got a Wednesday, 19th of October 1988, a copy of an accident report from set during the filming of the truck sequence. Would you like me to read it? Yeah, it's a telegram. During filming at the three-kilometre road, whilst working for us, a man from the electricity department was struck in the arm by a rocket being used for the side wheelie sequence. He was taken to hospital in Tiquana. The doctor's surgery, was sent home the next day and instructed to rest for a fortnight. Repercussions to follow, exclamation mark.
Speaker 5:Was that the boost tactic to push the vehicle onto its side when it did that kind of?
Speaker 1:thing. So that's the report for the scene where a rocket is fired and misses the tanker which is doing a side wheelie.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it flips it aside, like you know.
Speaker 1:So, no, no no, here it is Right. So this is the accident report for the scene where a rocket is fired and misses the tanker which is doing a side wheelie Amazing stunt, by the way. It was really good, the director said. Because we had exclusive access to this section of road, we free fired the rocket at the truck Down the road was an electrician working for us fixing the telephone pipes. He got hit by the rocket and severely injured his elbow. It was just a free accident. Another John Glenn special Wow.
Speaker 5:but he got some nice cash for that then, didn't he surely?
Speaker 1:Must have done. They don't talk about that.
Speaker 3:obviously, I would say leading up to this film. There was a lot of films leading up to this film where lots and lots of cars were riding on two wheels, like you know, horizontally down the road. Yeah, many, many films have done that and this is the only time I've ever seen it done with a massive lorry. Very good, and they did it for real, and that alone was one element that really did blow me away. I mean, I could forgive a lot of the things that I've said that was negative about the film because of that one scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was for not. I mean, the stunt work and the chiroatechic work in this film was absolutely phenomenal, it really was. There was so much in the more films, particularly the later ones, that really looked blue screen, you know, like real, you know, actor in front of a TV thing, safe and sound, and it was this. Everything just looked so real. So Qdot, it's a stunt team for that.
Speaker 5:Well, even the guy who wore the flame suit, you know as Sanchez, when he gets burned up at the end, that's really really. You know again stuntmen doing that. That's a massive, seriously dangerous, yeah.
Speaker 1:So again, that had to be cut as well, because what we saw was literally 10% of what they originally.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's very good that original scene where he burns to death. Lighten it, it still looks like a cigarette light.
Speaker 1:I thought that was really, really nice, because I again, I think most of the audience probably would have forgotten about the lighter. And then, in that final moment, and you're thinking how is Bond going to get out of this one? Because he's, you know, sanchez is holding that machete, he's about to bring it down and he says don't you want to know why? And Sanchez stops because of course he wants to know, because he wants to know why someone would have been distraught to him.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then Bond shows in the lighter and then flips it open and that ridiculously big flame because that thing is, you know, the gas thing on it is faulty or whatever from the CIA bargain bucket and it sets Sanchez on fire and he dies.
Speaker 5:And then Pam turns up in the remaining trailerless truck to pick him up hasn't she.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then, and then we get the last scene of the film, which is at Sanchez's former residence, where there's a party being thrown.
Speaker 5:El Presidente's party yeah.
Speaker 1:He gets a call from Felix to tell him that he's been reinstated or he's had his job offered back and then Lupe basically goes to try and seal the deal and he completely rejects Pam you know, having been this strong Bond woman through the whole thing is crying tears and getting up, oh, and then she sort of runs off and to Salk and and Bond, you know, sees it and rejects Lupe and then goes to her. I don't understand right.
Speaker 1:Because, like you know, if my wife saw me as so much as look at another woman across the thing at a party, don't worry, we're on. This is like episode 110. I think she's still on 30. I'm good for a couple years, but she took my freaking balls off. Like me, tugging her into a swimming pool and laughing wouldn't help at all. I'll be freaking dead. But he really just gets away with it.
Speaker 5:It's got three, doesn't he? I have? I have problems with this. I mentioned earlier on the podcast.
Speaker 1:John, let's get into this. The floor is yours.
Speaker 5:Real problems. Well, first of all, I don't think Lupe would settle for El Presidente. I know she's got a thing for all the men by the looks of it, but she, she's trying to snog him and say, well, you know, let's get together. And then a second later, when he says no, no, thanks, love. She's arm in arm with El Presidente on the balcony and Pam knows he's done her as well but still accepts him into her loving arms. In the film, the whole, the whole ritz narrative around the two women, I found it really confusing and troubling. And the only bit of the film that really vexed me was this, this ending bit. Here it was I don't know what you think of it, chaps, it just seemed really late.
Speaker 4:It was lazy, that's all it was, it was lazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but they probably put everything into the special effects. I mean, the one thing that I knew about license to kill when it was actually coming out was the actual scene where the truck goes on its side. That was a trailer for the film.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:I'd seen that. I didn't have to see the film, you know, when it was out because that was the best part of the film. You know they knew it and I think they were just getting really lazy with the other narratives and the other characters in the film sweeping the story under the carpet right at the end.
Speaker 5:There it's a bit. It reminded me a bit of the end of classic series Star Trek, where they all on the bridge at the end all go oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. After you know a whole planet's dying, they all think it's hilarious that something funny happens on the bridge. You know what I mean. It's just like a weird kind of mop up of the story.
Speaker 2:Q just sort of drinks his drink and laughs and moves on. And it's just yeah, there is, there is something about that that just not only doesn't know it makes sense, but it just it does definitely feel lazy yeah very unsatisfying.
Speaker 5:Which, considering it was literally the last frames of Dolphin we see, is a bit sad really, because I have to say we're going to talk about our Marxist film in a second. But he, I think he was a really good bond in this film.
Speaker 1:He was, you know, very, very good bond, I think, for anyone who's read any of the books, any of the source material, will know how good a bond he was. Yeah, and I think he was a good bond from that point of view, and that you know I thought he was great. You know there are some people I've heard who've said that the problem for Dalton is that he was probably 20 years too soon. Yeah, so you know he was, he was, this was a Daniel Craig vehicle. 20 years too early, yeah, and I think there's a lot, there's a lot of truth in that, but he was a very good bond, you know, overall.
Speaker 1:You know I always judge films, as you guys know, by. You know, was I, was my attention held throughout and was I entertained throughout. And with this one, you know, when I did get up to make a cup of tea, at one point I made sure I paused it, whereas other ones I might have, you know, like, for your eyes, only a view to a kill. It wouldn't have mattered if I missed a couple minutes, right, but this one I didn't really want to miss anything of it. So, yeah, so, with that in mind, let's go on to our ratings. Thanks, because we haven't heard from you from for a while, dude, where where do you put this?
Speaker 2:So I'm going to give it a solid seven. That's not as high as you might think, but it's just. It was. It was very competent, I think I. I preferred, so I preferred the other Dalton, so I prefer living daylights. You gave that.
Speaker 1:So just to remind anyone who has forgotten or has never listened to this before, listen to us before. Even Alex rated living daylights at nine out of 10.
Speaker 2:Nine yeah, and I stand by that, because what I liked about living daylights was it wrapped up a lot of the sort of fantasy and, like you know, overblown stuff that you, that you got in Some of the mores with like a very competent performance. This was a totally different film and it was like felt, like you said, it's like very much like Craig, but before you're, before I'm ready for Craig, I'm not ready yet, and so I think for me, this this does really well, but it doesn't, it's not, it just doesn't compare. I don't like. I would happily watch Thunder Thunderball, for example, again, and even though I've seen it before, whereas this one I just don't have the desire to watch it lots. It just it's good, but it's just. I'd rather be watching living daylights or one of the more memorable ones, and this just wasn't one of them.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 4:Phil.
Speaker 3:I'm going to give this one a six and I'm giving it the benefits of this and the positives of this is fantastic special effects, really excellent stunts and they did. They certainly didn't put any style in this, not one time during this podcast. If we talked about anyone's clothing, there was just. I mean, he didn't even bother wearing a tie, you know, except for when he's wearing his dinner jacket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's dinner jacket was awful. I'm happy to talk about that, not should. It was disgusting. It did nothing for him whatsoever.
Speaker 3:But the point I was making was that there was no elements going into the style whatsoever it was about they were trying to. I felt that they were trying to sort of make a film during a period when the genre was getting tired, but they knew that they had something with the special effects and and the stunts and they left some of those elements out. But I do think that now that I've seen it for myself, I actually did think that Timothy Tautin was good as Bond in this film. I don't think he had a chance to really develop his character like Roger Moore had the chance to, for example, because those early Roger Moore films it was a bit such and go, whereas you know he had a chance to do something and he was going somewhere with it and we ended up getting to where the character ended up with Daniel Craig. So I'm going to give this a six. There were some disappointing elements, but there were some things that made up for it.
Speaker 5:Well, john so it is interesting. Are you sorry, john?
Speaker 1:you gave the living daylight five point five. Yeah, I did not like you.
Speaker 5:So so here's what's interesting. For exactly the same reasons, alex gave but the complete flip around. I much prefer this to live in daylight. I really, really enjoyed this film. I'm going to give it an eight point five. So it loses a mark for the dodgy sexual politics and it loses a half a mark for me because I wasn't that impressed by this.
Speaker 5:The theme tune Gladys Knight. But for me it had everything. It had a really good story, very likeable characters. I loved Pam Bouvié. She was a great character in this, just personality wise, as well as being a very pretty lady. I like the fact that it had the most Q and it. Of all the films. I liked Dalton a lot. I was hooked, like you, with a plot. I really was. I would watch this film again and again. It's exactly opposite to what Alex was saying. Isn't that interesting how different we are. I really, really liked this. My wife didn't watch it with me this time, but I still watch it again with her because she's not seen it in the films. I don't think so. You know, I really liked it and I put it up there in my top five. I really, really liked this film and I think I'd forgotten how good it was for me, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I don't think I said this at the start. I mean, forgive me if I didn't on repeating myself, but I've never seen this film before, have I. I've even seen. I've maybe seen a few seconds of the torture scene with Felix on television on ITV4, while channel surfing, or something. Maybe a little bit. I think I do remember the clip of when, before they go to the bank to make the deposit, and Dalton tells Pam to go and get a change of clothes you know, if you're going to be my executive secretary and she says, well, why can't you be on these? Oh, it's a man's world down here in South America.
Speaker 2:Well, well, well, I'd never that's the first time I've seen it.
Speaker 1:So I started to entertain all the way through. I was riveted by the plot. I'm really into all this kind of cartel stuff and these real worlds kind of issues with these criminal gangs and so on. I thought it was kind of refreshing that they sort of rooted bond in the real world, which is what Dalton was going for, obviously. So yeah, and then I was hooked all the way through. My attention deficit thing didn't really kick in so, and also I thought about the film a lot in the last 24 hours since I've seen it, which is also a good sign of saying Bobby.
Speaker 5:I really enjoyed it. Did it make you because this is how I felt did it make you feel a little bit sad that we didn't get a third Dalton movie? Because I feel like he deserved a third movie.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's very good.
Speaker 1:I'm really. I think for Dalton timing was everything and he, they courted him such a long time and circumstances weren't right, or they were more swayed by sticking with more because of box office numbers and so on. And then there was another opportunity and then they got more back because they want to go ahead to head for autopussy with Sean Connery and so on, and I just kind of feel a bit sorry for Dalton, and you know he's one of the finest actors to take the role and they've all been good in their own ways. I just thought, having read some of the books, he was just so close to the source material and that's very, very important to me.
Speaker 1:I think that's why, you know, I saw Batman 89 at the weekends for the first time properly as an adult and I know, yeah, where I actually watched the film from start to finish and concentrated on it. And you know, for me just you know the dark nitrogen, nolan's dark nitrogen, gee, for me is Batman 89 Burton. Although Keaton is brilliant Overall, batman's Batman is not Batman. For me it really isn't, and that kind of jars with me, which is anyway. We're not here to review DC movies, so I'll stop there.
Speaker 4:That's a good drop mark on my head, isn't it really?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, because it would have been a big, yeah, that would be a big fight. We'd need Alex to get in between. So I give this an eight Again. I stopped. Just I was kind of oscillating between 8.5 and eight. So I was very close with you, john, but when I look at from Russia, with love mean Raker, despite he loved me, you only lived twice, and those last two I gave an 8.5. I didn't enjoy this as much as I. I'm not as fond of this as I was of those. So that's where I've put it. And then I also go Goldfinger and Dr. No, I also gave eights to, but you know they're Connery and I've, so I've got to put those above Dolphin, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:but yeah, because you know Connery, as brutal as he was, still had a bit of that cheek and that charm, and there's pretty much none of that with Timothy.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it's an eight. So it was a good film it was. It was really really good. It was a great bond. I thought other people completely disagree with that view. There are a lot of people that say it's not bond. It's not the bond that we've come to know and love from the Connery and the more films. Cubby agreed with that view. He basically said we need to go back to the bond that people want. You know, put the fun back into bond. That's what people come to the cinema for, and so that was the kind of whole sort of rethink for the film that we'll be seeing next, which is I'm not a spoiler alert One of my all time favorite bomb movies. I've seen this one so many times and I can't wait to see it again.
Speaker 2:We didn't get Phil's one.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we did yeah we did, we did, we gave it a six. Yeah, I gave it a six. I missed it, sorry the next film was six years later. Goodness me it was. Yeah, 95. Well, so it was a big gap Two years before the PlayStation came out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wow 1064,.
Speaker 2:baby, yeah, 1064.
Speaker 5:Gold right Greatest shoes. We are, let's see I'll be moving on to the Brosnan collection. We are we totally are Nothing's.
Speaker 1:I can really recognize it. We'll keep saying thanks, guys. That was, that was cool, that was fun. Phil, are you going to go watch the Living Day Lights at some point, or are you just not bothered?
Speaker 3:No, I think I should see it. Actually. I'll send over a little review separately for that.
Speaker 1:It's really good. Yeah, it's really good just to get a little sound bite from you, you know, with your thoughts on it. That would be really cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm actually away this weekend. Actually I might have some time to watch it actually while I'm away. So yeah, I'll let you know.
Speaker 1:When you record that, phil, can you also integrate why you hate Moon Raker so much, because we missed you for that one as well? Oh no no, I've said all I need to say on Moon Raker.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I want to put you through that again. I know it's fine.
Speaker 1:You know, all three of us actually have rated Moon Raker as one of our favourite Bond films of all time, so Well, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3:I'm happy for you guys. I'm glad you liked it so much.
Speaker 1:Glad you're happy for us. Thank you so so much guys. Really really appreciate you and look forward to doing this again very, very soon. Also like to just mention Playcourse Turn. We haven't been recording that much lately, but we've got loads to talk about coming up, so please do. Oppenheimer, barbie, the Mission Imp who's saying Mission Impossible?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I have.
Speaker 1:Fallout. Phil, are you into the Mission Impossible films?
Speaker 3:I haven't seen this. One Last thing I saw was the latest in the Indiana Jones film. I did see that fairly recently yeah.
Speaker 1:I was very emotional after that, and not for the reasons that I thought I would be, but anyway.
Speaker 3:Well, at least the co-star is going to work again, unlike every other co-star in Indiana Jones.
Speaker 4:So oh, no problem.
Speaker 1:Right, that's it. Let's wrap this up. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you once again for joining us. Everybody at home, remember. For regular show updates, join us on Instagram, taren's or podcast. You can support the show at the usual place.
Speaker 2:Link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Do check out Playcourse, turn available wherever you like to get your pods, and you can also help massively by reviewing us and giving us a rating. If your podcast listening out allows us to help other people find the show, we will return to review Goldeneye and Usher in the Piers Brosman era. Until then, take care, look after each other and we'll see you on the next 007 episode of Tatering Talk. Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye. Why do you not just wind me up every single time you lift up?
