Dalton was the right 007 at the wrong time
SOURCE: National Post
BYLINE: Katrina Onstad
SECTION: Arts & Life; Taking Stock of Bond; Pg. AL1
LENGTH: 1223 words
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the James Bond movies, and tomorrow's premiere of Die Another Day marks the 20th instalment in the official franchise. All this week, National Post film writers Katrina Onstad and Barrett Hooper assess the legacies of the five men who have played the role.
- - -
They say the Bond you love is the Bond you grew up with. If so, the tragedy of Timothy Dalton -- Bond from 1987 to 89 -- is that two years isn't enough time to form attachments.
Dalton was cursed by bad timing. In 1969, producers approached him for the part of James Bond after Sean Connery stepped down, but he pulled out of the race, declaring himself too young. He mentioned some hare-brained scheme about becoming an "actor," and then spent the '70s doing Shakespeare in the London theatre and appearing on film opposite Katharine Hepburn and Anthony Hopkins. Crazy kid.
Years later, when the creaking of Roger Moore's joints grew distracting, Dalton's name came up again as a possible Bond. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Michael Wilson wanted Pierce Brosnan but he was boxed in by a TV contract, and they went with Dalton. No matter how often the studio claimed him a worthy, desired Bond, Dalton never quite shook the runner-up title. The rub is that he remains, hands down, the most skilled actor to ever don the tuxedo. His perceived failure proves what everyone should have known already: James Bond isn't about acting.
Apropos to the Dalton curse, the late '80s were a rough time for Bond. For decades, the superspy had been fighting the Cold War of author Ian Fleming's 1950s imaginings, but as the '80s faded, the Eastern bloc appeared in pop culture as more silly than sinister. In the last throes of anti-Soviet sentiment, a feeling of smug victory infused entertainment: Wendy's ran slapstick ads about Russian swimsuit competitions (Russian women are fat, ugly and too dumb to use razors!), Yakov Smirnoff was considered funny, and Robin Williams did a crazee accent and wore a big furry hat in Moscow on the Hudson. The Russians weren't evil; they were laughable, and benign.
Into this climate came a serious Bond still intent on lassoing communist baddies.
In The Living Daylights (1987), after being played for a fool in a fake Russian defector scheme, Bond infiltrates an arms- and drug-smuggling ring that takes him to Afghanistan (references to the mujahedeen are loaded today).
The action is big and expensive, and Dalton looks good. In Gibraltar, he hangs from a speeding Land Rover with the nonchalance of a piece of laundry. Dalton did his own stunts, sparing audiences the cheesy blue screens and doubles in bad wigs that defined Roger Moore-era Bond.
Still, after Moore's light touch, Dalton's thumb-print eyebrows and gruff manner seemed bizarre. His Bond barked and argued like a guy with a conscience, all part of Dalton's plan. "To me, Bond is a flawed hero," he says in David Giammarco's book For Your Eyes Only. "How does he deal with himself morally when he's on the side of right and his job is to kill people? ... I wanted to capture that spirit of the man -- the essence of Fleming's work."
But by that time, movie Bond had far surpassed Fleming Bond in the popular consciousness. Morals might be well explored in literature, but they aren't the domain of action movies, especially not in the hermetically sealed Bond universe, one without consequences. No matter how convincing Dalton might have been (some critics thought he had returned the franchise to Connery's early days), his intensity confused fans. What of the throwaway lines, the flippancy, the sexual decadence? This 007 still made casual reference to foie gras and dressed in silk shirts, yet he seemed to be thinking too hard.
Times had changed, but the audience didn't want Bond to. The first scene of The Living Daylights shows a bikinied woman on a yacht talking into a cellphone the size of a watermelon: "If only I could find a real man." Of course, 007 parachutes in, but he's not really that kind of guy any more. By '87, AIDS was an epidemic, and the '80s Bond became a one-woman guy. He saves a beautiful Czechoslovakian symphony musician (Maryam d'Abo) by toboganning her into Austria on her cello case. Goodbye Tatiana Romanova and Domino; Dalton got dead-boring love interests with names like Kara and Pam. Director John Glen tried to be an artsier director -- he takes the couple to the Prater Amusement park in Vienna, a reference to The Third Man -- but it's too late. The movie is long, politically uncertain and joyless, an experience unimproved by a theme song by A-Ha.
Though international audiences accepted Dalton, in North America The Living Daylights sold fewer tickets than any Bond film since The Man With the Golden Gun. Undeterred, producers went with an even more personal Bond in the draggy Licence to Kill (1989). After the murder of his CIA buddy, Felix Leiter (David Hedison), and Felix's new bride (Priscilla Barnes), Bond infiltrates a South American drug ring to seek revenge. For the first time, Bond is travelling solo, a rogue agent operating without the Queen's backing, and this suits moody Dalton just fine. Barnes even makes reference to Bond's long-ago marriage -- in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, George Lazenby's Bond marries and his bride is assassinated -- to explain Dalton's brooding, though motivation and backstory are hardly requisites of the Bond persona. But vigilantes were hot in the '80s; the Dirty Harry franchise lumbered on, and even the U.S. President played tough guy with his "Make my day" anti-taxes speech.
Licence to Kill perhaps paid for its realism. One thing Bond must be is escapist, but this time, the plot mirrored current events with Noriega and the Contras, and the plot was as long and convoluted as the nightly news. Without any diffusing humour, the story felt oppressive. One has the unnerving sense that the funny moments are unintentional (though Wayne Newton as a lascivious guru has to be a joke, right?). The movie features some laughably ornate murders, including the old standbys "death by shark tank" and "death by giant paper shredder." Bad guy Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) carries an iguana on his shoulder -- unhygenic, not scary -- and says things like: "Senor Bond, you have big cojones!" In the background, a baby-faced (and gorgeous) Benicio Del Toro is on his own method-acting trip, delivering an overly intense character portrait of Dario, a.k.a Bad Dude #3, complete with little hissing sounds. Then he's eaten by sharks.
For sex, Bond has to choose between slinky Talisa Soto and stunned Carey Lowell (both of whom went on to partner-up well, Benjamin Bratt and Richard Gere, respectively). Soto delivers lines like "What will we do when all this is over?" with the emotion of the robot from Short Circuit. Dalton tries his best, acting his heart out for no good reason; a blue screen would have been better than Soto.
Audiences never embraced the '80s Bond -- Licence to Kill sold half the tickets of Octopussy in North America -- but that may have had more to do with the sluggish stories than Dalton. In any case, Pierce Brosnan owes a debt to his predecessor: He rescued Bond from camp, and gave him back his self-respect. If we couldn't accept him, then he may just have been the Bond we didn't deserve.
Edited by cassidybond, 16 April 2007 - 08:37 AM.
