I was 9 years old when LTK came out. I remember watching it when it first came out on video and thinking it was terrific. The later years were spent catching up on the other Bond films and reading Fleming, so the absence of new Bonds didn't occupy my mind, since all of the old ones were at hand. And since the end of LTK said "James Bond will return" I put my faith in that. I heard about the legal problems and thought that whenever they got those sorted out Bond really would return. There were times when I thought perhaps the series was permanently stalled, but I thought to myself, "Well, it's had a good run," and, as I said, I was still discovering or rediscovering the older entries.
I never switched allegiances--none of the other action heroes had class or comparable savoir faire. Who on Earth could prefer a bloated and bombastic film like
True Lies to Bond? In the end, perhaps it was for the best that Bond sat out the craze for people like Stallone, Arnold S,. and Bruce Willis. By the time people had tired of those live action cartoons, Bond was back.
When Brosnan was cast I wasn't particularly thrilled, since I'd seen him in
Ms. Doubtfire and
Remington Steele and he'd seemed light-weight in both. But I was very happy that Bond himself was back on track, even if I never really warmed to Brosnan.
Incidentally, I'm always amazed how some of the best aspects of a film are precisely the ones held against it.
Let's be clear: LTK is not a great film. Too much obligatory, "audience-pleasing" silliness sees to that (everything from the guy swinging the swordfish at Bond in the bar fight to Q dressed as a South American peasant just casually chucking his walkie-talkie broom into a bush once he's finished with it)
People complain about how humorless LTK is and then others complain about the genuinely humorous parts! The film can't catch a break, can it? What's wrong with either of those bits anyway? The swordfish is hanging in bar (as they often do) and gets used for a handy weapon--it's organic to the scene. It's not as if a swordfish jumped into the bar from the dock. And Q casually throwing away the broom is one of his best moments--after all those years of bitching at 007 for treating his gadgets badly we learn that even he treats them flippantly, but only after he's done with them. Moments like these, and the relationship between Dalton and Q, who becomes almost like Walter Brennan in a Howard Hawks movie, vitiate any complaints about Q's supposedly "pointless" inclusion.
a cluster of terrible performances (Talisa Soto is often slammed, and with some justification, but Carey Lowell is often awful, and even the great Dalton's work is a very mixed bag here [check out his dreadful eye-popping and grinning during the Barrelhead Bar scrap])
That's called comedic acting. I'd do it too if a guy was attacking me with a swordfish. And Lowell is not always terrific but she's never awful. She was certainly the best Bond girl since FYEO. She's spunky, impulsive, and its credible for Bond to care about she feels about him. I think she'd pretty badly underrated.
And yet, and yet. Robert Davi and his crew seem more and more impressive as the years pass
He's the best Bond villain since the Connery years.
heaven knows there's more than a large dollop of Fleming.... but it isn't a Bond film, at least not in the generally accepted sense.
The generally accepted sense views a Bond film as a bloated self-parody, along the lines of YOLT. It's interesting to read Benson's Bond Companion and see how he regards YOLT and the Moore films as
not being Bond movies. For me LTK is a return to Bondian roots and Flemingian ones--besides the LALD echoes, Bond's relationship with Sanchez recalls that of Bond and Scaramanga in TMWTGG. LTK is sort of like what TMWTGG would have come out like if Fleming had been in better health.
But what sort of Bond film, exactly, would have gone through the roof at the box office in 1989?
I don't know, but had the film been released in the fall, instead of having to compete with half a dozen sequels, blockbusters, and mega-successes like Batman, and had it received a competent promotional campaign, I think it would have been much better received. The summer of 89 was glutted with blockbusters--had LTK come out in fall or winter, the usual period for arty fare, when audiences are choking for action, history might have been different.
