The Living Daylights (1987)

Rating: 75%
Well now that we finally have Roger Moore's Bond finally out of the way, let's move on to film #15 which starts Timothy Dalton's short time as Bond with The Living Daylights

Plot: When Bond is sent to aid the defection of a KGB officer, he disobeys orders to kill a KGB sniper trying to kill the officer just because the sniper is a woman. The officer later informs M of an old plan from KGB called Smiert Spionam, meaning Death to Spies, but is later abducted by a KGB agent and presumably taken to Moscow. So Bond is ordered to find General Pushkin - the new head of the KGB, and kill him to prevent the death of other spies.

I can very easily say that this is a very refreshing start from moving on from Moore's Bond. With this Bond we get more gadgets, the action is bigger, the realism in the franchise has more or less returned, the villains and their evil plan...still aren't quite as memorable as Goldfinger and Bolfeld, but they were still good. And then you have Timothy Dalton as Bond. Dalton brought us back to how Bond should be, young, charming, and surprisingly even brought back some of Bond's dark side that we haven't really seen since Connery's Bond. Roger Ebert however didn't like how there wasn't really any humor from Bond, but to be perfectly honest, I can really do without any of that. After Diamonds are Forever and...basically most of Moore's films, I feel we can do with way less humor to help us take the films a bit more seriously. I have also noticed that this film also has a certain lack of Bond girls which naturally a fair amount of people also find to be an issue. While I can clearly see why, I also kind of find this to be refreshing...to an extent. Sure some Bond girls can be entertaining characters to these films - the Bond girl in this one, Kara I liked because of how despite how she can be a little dumb on one or two occasions did show way of trying to be helpful, strong and stand her ground as best as possible if she's being attacked by one of the bad guys. But there also wasn't all that much sexual content unlike most of the other Bond films, which...to be honest, is fine with me since I'm not a huge fan of that...and even then, it's a little nice to see them take a different turn from the rather noticeable aspect in most of these films of Bond sleeping with at least two women.

And that's my review for The Living Daylights. It was more serious, it was bigger with its action and gadgets, and Dalton gave us a very strong and refreshing movie that gives more realism and suspense that make The Living Daylights a big improvement and a very enjoyable movie.