Well, it's always fun to do a scene from a James Bond film, especially when it's a "good" Bond, like The Living Daylights. Like Timothy Dalton.
After the Roger Moore years, which took the satirical Bond series and turned the films into out-and-out comedies, it was nice to get back to "Ian Fleming's James Bond" (as they always called him in the credits) the way Ian Fleming wrote him. He was a lot like the movie-Bond, the way Connery played him, but without the puns, the wise-cracks, a lot nastier in action and less pleased with himself AND his job in attitude. Fleming's Bond took it all seriously, even if "the capers" he became involved with were not.
And Dalton "got" that. He took Fleming's Cold-War hero from the 1950's and made him work in the 1980's, which, after Bond being "hip" in the 1960's and a stodgy figment of fun in the 1970's, was something of a miracle. And where the Bonds from Connery to Moore were various shades of alpha-males, Dalton played Bond like he was an anonymous agent, trying to blend in with his surroundings and keeping to the shadows. The job was the thing, flippancy could come later.
I remember watching it in the theaters when it first came out...and thinking "we've finally got a real version of the written Bond," but there was something else—Dalton's Bond could be reckless. Dangerously so. And I specifically remember this scene (being presented today) and watching Bond whip around to point his gun at Pushkin's mistress as she reacts to her lover being thrown onto the bed. "That gun is all over the place" I thought, so fast was Dalton moving that the gun seems to be wobbling all over the room. That's kind of scary. Dalton is fast. But, when I was advancing the scene one frame at a time, that dangerous gun-traveling showed it to be only 2 frames...that's 1/12th of a second...before the prop-gun is properly aimed. That's impressive. And I had to do a lot of that frame-by-frame watching because Dalton's action scenes move so fast.
Credit also to director John Glen (who directed five of the series), who started as an editor on the Bond's, and became renowned as a "guy-who-could-get-the-shot" second unit director—he was the only one from a phalanx of cameramen who captured that amazing parachute jump opening on The Spy Who Loved Me.
He doesn't do an awful lot of coverage with extraneous shots, but he lets you know where everything is in the room and where everybody is in relation to each other. If you're momentarily not sure, Bond or another character will enter the frame from off-camera and immediately clue you in. And he's not afraid to cross-cut locations in the midst of action. There would seem to be an unnecessary shot of Pushkin's body-guard sitting and settling down in the hallway at the beginning. But, it's important information to recall later when things start happening fast when Pushkin signals he's in danger.
And this scene is taut. It's edited fast and claustrophobic, with Dalton and Rhys-Davies taking the roles of predator and prey quite seriously (John Barry's dirge-like suspense music helps). I've seen audiences jump at the banging gavel sound effects that explode over the last shot as they're mistaken for real gun-shots. They actually think...and expect...that Bond will kill his opponent in cold blood.
It'd been a long time since anybody thought that James Bond could be dangerous. Entertaining, sure...but not dangerous.
The Set-up: The defection of Russian General Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé) and his subsequent kidnapping by parties unknown has MI6, the British Secret Service, in a high dudgeon. At the same time, there is a suspicion—deliberately planted ones—that the Russian KGB have resurrected their old "Smiert Spionem" ("Death to Spies") section and used it to kill some British agents in the melee. MI6 Chief "M" (Robert Brown) has dispatched the initially reluctant "00" agent James Bond (Timothy Dalton) to use his license to kill to eliminate the new head of the Russian spy service, General Leonid Pushkin (John Rhys-Davies). But, Bond, tracing Pushkin to an economics conference in Tangier wants some answers first.
Action.
The Living Daylights
Words by Richard Maibaum and Michael Wilson
Pictures by Alec Mills and John Glen
The Living Daylights is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Video.
Words by Richard Maibaum and Michael Wilson
Pictures by Alec Mills and John Glen
The Living Daylights is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Video.