Product Description

2 Disc Collectors Edition

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62544 in DVD
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: NTSC, Widescreen, Closed-captioned
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Running time: 131 minutes

Customer Reviews

Dalton's Debut Is Impressive
The first thing that struck me about this film is that Timothy Dalton could act and he took the part very seriously. I found THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS to be one of the better James Bond films. I think it is the best since ON HER MAJESTY's SECRET SERVICE. I really liked Timothy Dalton as James Bond, the James Bond he gave us in this film (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS). He was not the hard edged civil servant but more of a thinking man's blunt instrument as he demonstrated his reluctance to get the job done "their" way as opposed to "his" way.

John Barry delivered his last 007 score and it is one of his best. I also enjoyed a-ha's rich and lyrical theme song played over Maurice Binder's main titles, which are very reflective. The music video and the making of the video are on this DVD. This was also the last Bond film made during the actual cold war. We see a much more intelligent British agent discern that the KGB is not made up of a bunch of hoodlums but instead it is actually headed by an equally intelligent counterpart to "M" and the like. The dark yet richly colored photography and locations bring back much of the feel of the earlier Bond films.

Timothy Dalton deserved to be around much longer as James Bond based on his work in this film.

The extras are very good. They are well thought out and prepared. I like the re-design of the menu screens. The digital sound restoration is spectacular. The new digital sound restoration adds a new dimension to the film. The images are also much crisper, cleaner and vibrant. I also like the redesign of the cover graphics.

Licence Renewed
As with George Lazenby, the brevity of Timothy Dalton's tenure as Bond - due to years of legal problems and lawsuits between EON and MGM/UA - has led to history merrily being rewritten by the press that once hailed him. Dalton, not the lawyers, was lined up as the fall guy with Pierce Brosnan the man who saved the series from disaster (even though Dalton's first Bond saw a massive increase in takings over Moore's last film). Those who are quick to dismiss him would do well to check out The Living Daylights.

Much of the scapegoating of Dalton seemed to come from the confusion of actor and role. At the time Dalton's Bond was the closest to Fleming's creation - more so than Connery, even - and given the right script he proved outstanding in the role. After Roger Moore's 12-year, seven-film tenure as Bond finally came to an ignominious end with A View to a Kill, as with OHMSS, Live and Let Die and Casino Royale, the producers broke in their new Bond with a more low-key, low-gadget approach, resulting in the best Bond since the Sixties, with Dalton initially looking the first Bond to seriously rival Connery. Where Connery had the danger and Moore the class, Dalton managed to combine both, with Bond's self-assurance that verges on the arrogant down pat, reclaiming the character from the increasingly comic-strip approach of too many of the later Moore films.

The film isn't without its faults - Caroline Bliss isn't up to much as Moneypenny, Maryam D'Abo's a bit of a wet leading lady while Jeroen Krabbe lacks the menace he brought to No Mercy - but it looks and feels like a classic Bond film, has little truck with gadgets and is less in thrall to silly jokes. Best of all, it's got a plot (involving a dubious defection, Mujahadin opium smuggling in Afghanistan and a re-activated Stalinist spy assassination programme). The political background may have dated - this was filmed when the Communists still held the USSR together and when the Mujahadin were the good guys - but it still comes up remarkably fresh. This is Bond with all the stops pulled out but without the overkill. The production values are superb and visually it's a treat, especially in widescreen, with John Barry making his final Bond score his best in years. The action scenes are often outstandingly good, with a return to the kind of good old vicious punchups that vanished in the latter Moore years and as well as some amazing stunt work involving a Russian troop plane and it has one of the series' best pre-title sequences, with a security exercise in Gibraltar turning into the real thing. The makers even have the confidence to remove Bond from one of the key setpieces - a superbly staged kidnapping from a safehouse, which runs nearly a full reel. John Glen's direction is so spot-on here it's hard to see why it would go so horribly wrong on Licence To Kill.

The extras package is excellent, including audio commentary, an extended scene and the infamous deleted `magic carpet' sequence, a bad idea that feels like a holdover from the Roger Moore era that was thankfully dropped due to the stunt looking distinctly unimpressive. There are enough new features on the two-disc Ultimate edition to make an upgrade worthwhile for the more ardent Bond fans - several promo featurettes from the original release, a press conference held in Vienna and 47-minute TV special `Happy Anniversary 007.' All the features from the original DVD release have also been included.

A New Bond with a New Style
The mystery of how well the new Bond would replace Roger Moore in the fifteenth "official" Bond movie was over with "The Living Daylights." The style of the movie was set with the opening scenes, where three double-0 agents parachute onto Gibraltar as part of an infiltration exercise. Unfortunately, someone in the exercise is using real ammunition, not paint balls. Timothy Dalton shows that he is made of Bond material as he jumps onto an escaping jeep and fights with the bad guy as the jeep full of explosives catches fire, flies off a cliff, and explodes, with Bond having departed in a typically clever fashion but moments before the fireball erupts.

Timothy Dalton was a no-nonsense Bond in this movie. He eliminated the numerous one-liners that seemed to be a Roger Moore characteristic in favor of a leaner and meaner and much more spy-like Bond. In this first of two Bond movies Dalton had yet to achieve the presence and technique of either Sean Connery or Roger Moore, but he breathed new life into the series.

The plot bears some characteristics of "A View to a Kill" in that both films portray the Soviet Union as a friendlier nation beset with evil doers who would take advantage of the kinder, gentler, Soviet Union. This time the criminals are looking to do a novel sort of bait and switch, profiting by buying drugs from Afghanistan and selling them in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the money belongs to the Soviet Union.

Mixed into this plot is a Soviet defector, KGB General Koskov (Jeroen Krabbé). Bond's mission was to get Koskov out of East Germany and into Berlin. However, it appears that someone wants Koskov dead, as a beautiful assassin attempts to kill Koskov as he attempts to defect. Bond has a chance to kill Kara Milovy, well played by Maryam d'Abo, but he elects to shoot the gun from her hand instead.

The plot thickens during the debrief of Koskov. Koskov tells British agents that General Leonid Pushkin, played by always excellent actor John Rhys-Davies, is executing a program to eliminate Britain's secret agents. Unfortunately, KGB appears to retrieve Koskov from the English estate safe house and the British agents are unable to learn more. Bond turns to Kara Milovy. Bond leads Kara to believe he is going to get her out of the country to meet Koskov, her patron. However, Bond has yet to learn where Koskov is.

What follows is an action-packed movie that is nicely plotted and interesting to the end. There is an excellent battle scene in Afghanistan (filmed in Morocco), and an even better escape scene from Afghanistan. After all that action there remains one loose end to tie up, which Bond does nicely.

During the film we meet another excellent supporting actor, Art Malik as Kamran Shah, an Afghani chief. We also meet Joe Don Baker as self-centered Brad Whitaker. There is yet another version of Felix Leiter, this time a less than memorable version of Leiter. Caroline Bliss is a mediocre version of Miss Moneypenny.

The special effects were much more down-to-earth versus those in "A View to a Kill." The ubiquitous Aston-Martin returns with rockets, rocket boost, outriggers, and sundry other gadgets. There is a sliding glass door used as a weapon by an assassin. The same assassin also uses a headset as an assassination tool. This film also featured exploding milk bottles. The way Koskov escapes from East Germany is excellent for at least a couple of reasons, including the use of a Harrier vertical takeoff jet. In general the special effects were well done and believable.

There are a few moments where I noticed some scene glitches. It appeared that in the final scenes of the movie that there were places where the four-engine C-130 Bond was flying had two engines. In another scene in the plane Bond looks out the left window and we see fuel leaking from a tank. However, the bullet holes are on the opposite side of the tank from the window. Perhaps Bond also has x-ray eyes. In yet another scene Kara drives a jeep up the ramp of the C-130, which is impossible due to the configuration of the C-130's ramps. However, these minor errors can be forgiven as the quality of the rest of the movie is excellent.

This two-disk set includes a massive array of features, many of which are interesting, some of which are not. I tend to find these features valuable, but then again I have watched these movies many, many times.

Keeping with the trend of having current musical artists perform the title song, A-Ha sings "Living Daylights." A-Ha was popular in Europe at the time, and had a huge hit in the United States with "Take on Me."

Enjoy!