I remember when I was a teenager and Timothy Dalton replaced Roger Moore as James Bond. I think I must have viewed it at the time with the same consternation that original Bond fans viewed Moore replacing Sean Connery 15 years earlier. I grew up with Moore as Bond. The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only were THE seminal Bond films for me during my formative years, and now the only person I had really known as Bond was being replaced by the guy that I only knew as Prince Barin from the crappy, er campy, 1980 version of Flash Gordon. Yes, I know now that he was Philip II in Lion in Winter with Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn, and that he was Heathcliff in 1970’s Wuthering Heights. Give me a break. I was 16 in 1987. The point is that Dalton was the new guy, and to me at that time he could never live up to the legacy that Moore had created. Timothy Dalton was the guy who followed THE GUY.

Now with the benefit of age, experience and a film degree, I can confidently say that I could not have been more wrong with that assessment. I probably hadn’t watched The Living Daylights in its entirety since seeing it in the theater 26 years ago, and I remained down on Timothy Dalton as Bond… until last night. Now I wish Dalton had been in more Bond films.

After Roger Moore had spent 15 years trying to squeeze every bit of comedy and light-heartedness out of a professional killer, Timothy Dalton presented us with the true precursor to playing the role in the manner in which Daniel Craig has made so popular. In The Living Daylights Dalton gives us a professional Bond without losing the playboy core. Dalton’s Bond is brooding, intense and deliberate, and he doesn’t kill recklessly or needlessly. There is something simmering inside of Dalton’s Bond that feels like it could explode at any moment. Dalton played the role much more similarly to the way Ian Flemming wrote the character originally in his novels, and similarly to the way Danial Craig plays the role today. I suspect that audiences in the mid-80’s weren’t ready for that drastic a shift from the care-free Moore to the brooding Dalton. It might have worked better in the early 90’s, but pop culture in the late 80’s was not nearly serious enough for a brooding Bond, unlike the pop culture of the 90’s and even more so today.

The case in point of how the new Bond operates is near the beginning of the film where General Koskov is escaping the theater and Kara Milovy aims a rifle at him from a second floor window. Instead of shooting her, Bond shoots the rifle out of her hands. Knowing Bond’s reputation, we think he just can’t kill a pretty girl. However, he states later that he knows she’s not a professional sniper, and as he tells Saunders later in the scene, he only kills professionals. We’re 10 minutes into the film, and we’re already seeing Bond played with a depth that we have not seen to this point in the series.

As for the film itself, I believe that it’s right up there among the very best Bond films. Rotten Tomatoes as it rated as the #10 highest rated Bond film ever, and my humble opinion puts it very close to the top 5. It has a deep story with good dramatic irony, and it’s one of the best acted Bond films as well, with the possible exception of John Terry as Felix Leiter. He was pretty bad. However Jeroen Krabbe was very good as General Koskov, Maryam D’Abo was adequate as Kara Milovy, Joe Don Baker was his usual smarmy self as Brad Whitaker, and John Rhys-Davies made even a Russian likable as General Pushkin.

The story also has a well-structured Hero’s Journey, and it’s deep and rich with intrigue. The dramatic irony that they wrote in to the script keeps you guessing about who Bond can trust and who he can’t. The action sequences are some of the most sophisticated in the series to date. The climactic scene where Bond fights with Necros outside the cargo plane harkens to Octopussy, but feels a lot more intense. Then when Bond and Kara escape the plane crash by riding the jeep out of the back ramp of the plane, Bond seamlessly goes from intense to debonair when he sees the road sign pointing to Karachi, and he tells Kara that he knows a great restaurant there and that they can just make dinner. It’s a great example of Dalton humanizing Bond without crossing the line into the silly or the absurd.

I think what might keep this film from being ranked higher on most Best of Bond lists is that fact that neither General Koskov or Brad Whitaker are particularly memorable villains. Koskov is a charming, yet sadistic manipulator and Whitaker is a brutish war mongerer, but neither of them come close to reaching the iconic status of Goldfinger or Blofeld or Karl Stromberg. In fact, their henchman Necros has much more menace throughout the film. He’s an emotionless assassin who is as ruthless as he is efficient, and he represents a true challenge and a worthy adversary to Bond right up to the climax of the film.

Also, Kara Milovy is an average Bond girl. Certainly not as great as Honey Ryder or Anya Amasova, but no where near as bad as Holly Goodhead or Stacey Sutton, Kara Milovy lands somewhere in the middle of the pack when rating Bond girls. What’s interesting about this film is that Bond is much more monogamous than in previous films. Perhaps it was due to the burgeoning AIDS crisis at the time, but Dalton’s Bond was far less promiscuous than any of his predecessors. Yes, it is implied that he’ll sleep with the heiress after he lands on her yacht during the prologue, but the rest of the film has him feigning affection for Kara as he attempts to get information out of her regarding Koskov, and eventually falling for her. This film may have set the all time record for fewest women that Bond sleeps with at 2. With that in mind. Kara should have become a much deeper character than most of the previous Bond girls in the series and she does to a degree. She also straddles the line between damsel in distress and girl who can take care of herself, but she never fully enters either type. That ultimately is the problem with Kara. The film makers were never able to define what type of Bond girl she was going to be.

All in all, this is a fine film and a worthy edition to the pantheon of Bond films. It’s probably the strongest debut film for any Bond to date, surpassing Connery’s Dr. No, Lazenby’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Moore’s Live and Let Die. This film has tight action, a well structured story and interesting and entertaining characters. It definitely should be added the list of Bond films to see again if you haven’t seen it for a while.