Plot
James Bond is living on the edge to stop an evil arms dealer from starting another world war. Bond crosses all seven continents in order to stop the evil Whitaker and General Koskov.
Storyline James Bond 007's mission is to firstly, organise the defection of a top Soviet general. When the general is re-captured, Bond heads off to find why an ally of General Koskov was sent to murder him. Bond's mission continues to take him to Afghanistan, where he must confront an arms dealer known as Brad Whitaker. Everything eventually reveals its self to Bond.
Writers: Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson
Cast: Timothy Dalton
-
James Bond
Maryam d'Abo
-
Kara Milovy
Jeroen Krabbé
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General Georgi Koskov
Joe Don Baker
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Brad Whitaker
John Rhys-Davies
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General Leonid Pushkin
Art Malik
-
Kamran Shah
Andreas Wisniewski
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Necros
Thomas Wheatley
-
Saunders
Desmond Llewelyn
-
Q
Robert Brown
-
M
Geoffrey Keen
-
Minister of Defence
Walter Gotell
-
General Anatol Gogol
Caroline Bliss
-
Miss Moneypenny
John Terry
-
Felix Leiter
Virginia Hey
-
Rubavitch
Filming Locations: Ait Benhaddou, Ouarzazate, Morocco
Box Office Details
Budget: $30,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: $11,051,284
(USA)
(2 August 1987)
(1 Screen)
Gross: $191,200,000
(Worldwide)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
There are three parallels in the film to the earlier James Bond movie
For Your Eyes Only. These occur during the beginning of the film. Koskov is being detained and debriefed during lunch, he mentions Gogol's dislike for the new policy of détente. At the end of
For Your Eyes Only, Bond throws the ATAC off of the mountain and tells Gogol "That's détente General, You don't have it, I don't have it". In the kitchen of the very same building is a parrot that has a striking resemblance to Max, the Havelocks' parrot from
For Your Eyes Only. During the lunch, Koskov says of Pushkin, "We were once like brothers". In
For Your Eyes Only, Kristatos also uses the same line when speaking about Columbo.
Goofs:
Continuity:
When Bond parachutes off the Rock of Gibraltar at the beginning we see him slowly descending towards a moving yacht in the sea below. However, the moment he lands, the yacht is clearly moored in the harbour next to other boats, and going nowhere.
Quotes:
[first lines]
M:
Gentlemen, this may only be an exercise so far as the Ministry of Defence is concerned. But for me, it is a matter of pride that the 00 section has been chosen for this test. Your objective is to penetrate the radar installations of Gibralter. Now, the SAS has been placed on full alert to intercept you, but I know you won't let me down. Good luck, men.
User Review
A New Era Dawns...Temporarily.
Rating:
The year: 1987, the Man: Timothy Dalton, the film? The Living Daylights
and good news for adults across the globe because after sending off
their kids to joke it up with Roger Moore for over a decade they could
finally sit down to a Bond movie which, whisper it quietly, resembled a
real thriller...and a good one at that. We should be grateful for
Dalton's two stints as the Bond because they came within a whisp of
never existing. Had the studio had their way, Moore would have been
wheeled off for Brosnan and a serious reinvention of the series would
have been dropped in favour of the, er, "winning" return to form we've
been privileged enough to have enjoyed since 1995's Goldeneye.
Dalton's take on the character was to return it (and I hope you're
sitting down) to the brooding, cruel and methodical assassin envisioned
by Flemming in his original stories. TD was a RADA trained
Shakespearian actor for God's sake and certainly had no intention of
smirking and punning his way through each adventure. Dalton said that
half the world loved Connery and the other half loved Moore (which is
hedging your bets a bit) but he bravely chose to play it like neither.
We can only imagine at the relief Richard Maibrum must have felt, given
the opportunity to finally write an real screenplay tailored to the new
approach, having been no doubt advised in previous outings that plot
and character was superfluous to requirements. The result is a story
set in the real world . Goodbye super-villains bloated on world
domination plots and hello to arms dealers, Afgan resistance fighters,
double crosses and political assassinations. After so many remakes of
You Only Live Twice it certainly is a tonic and Dalton's hard-edged,
professional spy washes over you like a radox bath following a 300 mile
trek through the Gobi. His performance reinvigorates the series and
makes all thats old new again. The familiar elements are all here - the
car, the girls, the locations, but anchored in a real cold war setting
with Pretenders loving KGB agents round every corner and the credible
whiff of counter-espionage, the whole thing crackles with an energy and
an urgency that would have been a fantasy in any of Moores mirth-ridden
efforts. Even John Barry's music, in his final contribution to the
series, is a fresh and exciting affair - blending high tempo action
cues with his usual gift for generating a sense of foreboding and
pathos in equal measure. Yes, Bond hadn't felt this good or LOOKED this
good since the mid-sixites but as if to prove the old adage that you
can't have too much of a good thing, we didn't. Audiences found Dalton
humorless and the heady excesses of good story, three-dimensional
characterisation and real world setting somewhat distracting. After
all, where were all the puns (Dalton's "he got the boot" aside), the
jokes and the evil bloke at the end who plans to ravage the planet with
deadly spores? People were beginning to ask and Dalton still had two
films to go on his contract....
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