The Living Daylights Tribute thread

[Dr. No]

Hindsight is always 20/20. Besides the US was actually aiding the Mujahadeen, trying to make the Soviets "bleed" in Afghanistan like the reds did to them in Vietnam.

It ought to at least give our governments pause for thought before they fund and arm the next batch of "friendly" rebels. But sadly, it won't.

Afghanistan was the cause in the late 1980s, Rambo 3 was basically a movie promoting the propaganda. Our policy has been then enemy of our enemy is our friend, but todays friend is tomorrows enemy.
Saddam was a monster but the country of Iraq had better military strength and people of faiths were better protected. We propped Iraq up as a foil against Iran who now have major in roads with the leadership in Iraq. Funny thing is Reagan was furious Israel bombed the heck out of the Saddam's nuclear reactor history proved them right and now they are in the position to have to act alone again to stop Iran.

Anyway my point was the "good guys" in the 1980s were the ones the world had to fight next. Bond and lot of other people supported the propaganda, although i think Bond was a head of the curve trying to underplay the adversarial relationship between Russia and the west. Although from the start SPECTRE stood in for the soviet SMERSH.

[Jim]

One of the more important Bond movies. Successfully continuing the character after a dozen long light hearted Moore years, establishing a new era of a serious Bond, straight from Fleming's pen to your eyeballs. A moderate success at the time but is getting ever more popular in hindsight. Dalton truly was ahead of his time, and most fans are only just catching up to him.

In the context of the time I'm amazed this film was made like this. In stark contrast to Moore, Dalton was dark and merciless he only has one Bond girl due to 1987 being around the height of STD scares so they took away Bond's trademark "super penis" as a result. It involved helping Afghan militants, as shaky an issue than as now and not only disobeys his orders constantly but says he would welcome being fired. Truly the film that does the literary character of Bond the most justice.

I liked Dalton as Bond. But I'm not sure, to quote, 'in stark contrast to Moore, Dalton was dark and merciless'. Moore was actually very gritty in a number of outings as Bond, dark and merciless even. I'm thinking of Bond's cold exploitative manipulation of both Rosie Carver and Solitaire in Live and let Die, and of his almost callous lack of concern for Goodnight and his actually striking Andrea in the Man with Golden Gun. In these films, certainly, Bond was portrayed as cold hearted, ruthless and lethal.