LIGENGE TO DRIVE

FOR MUCH OF its running time, Licence To Kill — aka Timothy Dalton’s second and final outing as 007 — does something interesting for a Bond film. It forgets to be a Bond film. Instead, it turns into a very ’80s rip-roaring rampage of revenge, as Bond — miffed because Latin American drug baron Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) has unsurgically removed the legs of Bond’s BFF Felix Leiter, via sharks without frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads — infiltrates Sanchez’s organisation, waiting for his moment to strike. So it’s not about saving the world. It doesn’t trot the globe, instead largely staying put in the fictional Isthmus City. Yes, Bond sleeps with two women, but his heart’s not really in it. And the action is determinedly low-scale. Certainly there’s nothing in the way of the large-scale lavish stuntwork with which the Bond franchise made its name.

Until, that is, the climax, when Bond remembers he’s Bond, and everything goes bonkers. There are gunshots. There are explosions. And, more pertinently, there is a full-on, foot-on-the-throat, ten-minute chasehistory.