The Living Daylights (1987) Reaction | First Time Watching 

One of my favorites. Dalton is fantastic.

My most rewatchable Bond film. The The Pretenders songs are awesome, as is the overall soundtrack. I love that it’s mostly serious, but not without levity. The main villain doesn’t quite live up to the hype, but that’s my only problem. It’s a true spy thriller. The sniper scene is flawless. Dalton looks like a guy whose done that before.

About Timonthy Dalton. 1 he has been in the period dramas one was Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre and second a sequel of the movie Gone With the Wind Scarlett. After the second Bond movie him as a James Bond there was a long time gap and it was because of legal disputes and there was a writers strike and when they started to make Goldeneye Timonthy Dalton was not interested anymore playing Bond 3 He has done many smaller roles and cameos but his heart is in the British Royal Theater and acting on the theater stage.

Timothy Dalton was brilliant as Bond, my favorite. The closest to Ian Flemings vision. What Craig recently did Dalton did already 20 years before him. The fact he only has 1 girl in the film is a response to the AIDS virus that was at its height at the time.

All Bond actors sign a 3 picture deal, with the option of a fourth. Contracts after that are done picture by picture. There was no Bond film between 1989 and 1995 due to a legal battle with producers about the rights to certain things and that battle took 6 years to resolve. In the 3 picture deal however is a ‘time clause’ that the 3 pictures have to be made within a certain time frame. In Dalton’s case that time clause ran out in 1994 and he therefore opted out to focus on other things. This is why Dalton only made 2 films. Had the legal battle not taken place I’m pretty sure he would have had around 4 films.

I feel like this movie might grow on you on rewatches. There are many little things that Dalton brings to the Bond character, in order to make him more human. His thinly veiled disdain for his job and his superiors, his rage when Saunders gets killed (you'd never see Moore throwing deadly glares like that) and overall him just feeling like an actual spy. Especially in the beginning opera scene. Dalton brings that quite, but dangerous element back to Bond, that Moore for all of his charisma had been lacking. I also think a big strength of this movie IS actually the romance. To me this is the most cold war romance/spy thriller out of all the Bond movies. His relationship with Kara develops slowly from him using her in order to gain information, to him starting to actually care for her (similarly to Tania in From Russia With Love). It's one of the better romances in these films imo and Kara is a realistic, but still strongly fleshed out female character. Definitely very naive, but it fits a civilian, who's suddenly drawn into the schemes of espionage.

One of my favourite bonds. Very rewatchable. Two things: firstly, cut Kara some slack for turning on bond when she did - he’d been lying to here from the start up to that point and she then hears from her boyfriend that he was a spy trying to kill him. I’m not sure it was irrational of her to turn on bond. Second, Kara is the only person besides koskov, Whitaker and necros (the milkman assassin) who knows the defection was fake. It would’ve been important for bond (who is going against orders by not killing Pushkin) to have her alive and well should the need for her inside knowledge be needed by anyone else. It isn’t that she is providing ongoing assistance or is part of the mission (a la triple X), rather that she is someone who needs safeguarding.

General Koskov was the Doctor in "The Fugitive" who set up Harrison Ford!

He also played Rhett Butler in the tv movie Scarlett, with Joanne Whalley as Scarlett O'Hara.

@ 8:16 - "...listening to the 'boom-box'..." I see what you did there. Well played, ma'am... 😁

Dalton was terrific and shame he only did two but his debut is just brilliant. Fun trivia: The parrot is the same one from For Your Eyes Only.

8:29 Desmond Llewellyn was great in all the Bond movies he was in, because he was at his charming and caring best during the Dalton era.

The only Bond movie I liked was "License to kill". Great watching you!

I had so much fun watching this with you both! I got a tickle out of The “Ghetto Blaster” scene with Q and Nick saying “J’accuse!” I kind of miss the cartoony moments of light whimsy, but that’s done again later in Other Bond’s. Very excited that you’ll be doing “Never Say Never Again”. I want to see that. And please, when you do, tell us what you think of the theme song…. 😀

"Smiert Spionam," or SMERSH, is a callback to the Ian Fleming novels. It was, as mentioned, a real Soviet organisation, and the main antagonists in many of the novels, though the movies tended to change them into Spectre, thus making them a little less political. From Russia With Love was the one movie before now that actually mentioned Smersh, but just as a false trail.

9:42 Did you recognise him ? He plays a baddie in Die Hard and Mission Impossible too - not bad for an ex-Ballet dancer !

11:04 G-HUEY' seen here was a genuine ex-Vietnam War helicopter. It flew 559 combat hours with 129th Assault Helicopter Company. It ended up being sold to Argentina and was used in the Falklands where it was 'commandeered' - AKA stolen ! - by a Brit and eventually brought back to the UK and used for pleasure flights and media productions such as this.

The girl who Timothy Dalton rips the robe off during the scene w/General Pushkin (Virgina Hey) was in the video for The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star. I also think she briefly dated Michael Hutchence, the frontman for INXS, at the time too.

27:40 As an engineer: That bridge ... a) would NOT support tanks IF it was made out of wooden beams b) would NOT collapse from a tiny bomb that has no focusing of the explosive force (so most of it would "evaporate" into the easily compressible air

That's Gibraltar. The rock face and barbary apes.

7:59 Cubby pointed out to Lois Maxwell during 'A View to a Kill' that she was the only cast & crew from 'Dr No' that hadn't left the series - she knew the writing was on the wall then and actually asked for Moneypenny to be killed off. He recast her instead.

I hear that Gogel was originally planned for the Pushkin role, which would have made the audience more sympathetic w/ James' hesitation about assassinating him given their cinematic history. But health concerns resulted in a cameo instead.

This movie is the first Bond movie I saw in cinema when I was a teenager. Until now I never miss one movie. For a record I watched all bond movies within one week released. Except for No time to die that is after 3 months

He's there in Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies. The general guy. Only he calls Bond, Jimbo.

Timothy Dalton also voiced one of the toys in Toy Story 3.

Fun reaction! And yes, Dalton was the best looking Bond! I like his understated, edgy performance.

Boop boop ba doop!!!!! Yay! I'm super glad that you guys liked this one! A great supporting cast, great music, great action scenes, great car, and great tech, a nice mystery of who's playing who at the first half. I like that he's not just wildly wooing women either here... he's a bit more reserved with it. Dalton may have been be a little serious and focused for some, comming off of years of Moore's sillyness- BUT I think he was a great fit for the role. Again this is my 2nd favorite Bond film... second to Goldeneye! :-) (Pierce's first foray into the role made even better by his supporting cast and *incredible* villians/and their actors, imho).

He didn’t have a chance to do a third one. Not really. They were behind the scenes, lawsuits or legal issues when they finally cleared them up and had been several years and Dalton’s contract was up and he didn’t want to come back.

26:19 In the footage you cut where Daltons stunt double was clinging on to the netting, he wasn't supposed to be tossed around as violently. They encountered unexpected turbulence and he barely managed to hold on. When they reviewed the footage they decided to use it and cut to Dalton being flipped back into the plane.

He also appeared in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear.

"There's Always Room for Cello" ....

that was just a warm-up for Rambo III...

That Strad cello is worth today probably at least 10 million. lol

Fun fact: The Kamran Shah character was intended to be a parallel for the real life leader of the Mujahideen. Guess who that was? It still cracks me up. Bin Laden was once a Bond ally. It’s historically accurate, but wow. That doesn’t age well. 😂 It’s all unintentionally funny.

34:01 Dalton was down to do a third movie that was going to be called Property Of A Lady but the studio would only keep him on as Bond if he agreed to a 4-5 movie contract to basically be the star in all of Brosnan's Bond films so that's how the deal fell through.

The problem with this movie is that it often feels like the writers are still writing for Roger Moore. Dalton plays the character straight and with a harder edge, which contrasts with some of the sillier moments in the script. I'm glad License To Kill lets him lean more into his strengths and I wish we'd had at least one more movie with him.

2:38 people say Sir Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan "look" like James Bond. But Timothy Dalton behaved like James Bond.

Art Mallik is the evil guy in True Lies.

"...almost like a Shakespearean actor..." you guys realize that he was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for about half a decade...?

John Rhys-Davies creates such a reaction? React to the 6-part miniseries *_"SHOGUN"_* ... one of the most accurate translations from book to film ever.

Surely NSNA has to be watched alongside O 😊

General Pushkins role was supposed to be General Gogol but Gogol’s actor was busy with another film and only had time for the cameo at the end.

What's the difference between a violin and a viola?

You know where Ester came from.

Caroline Bliss replace Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny because the produces thought with a new young James Bond they needed a new young Moneypenny.

Fun fact: Pierce Brosnan was considered to play the role of James Bond, but turned it down to star in the hit series Remington Steele. Sam Neill, Mel Gibson, Michael Nader, Bryan Brown, Finlay Light And Andrew Clarke were considered for the role as well.

Hey guys ;) I just really wanted to make a suggestion about future bond movies reactions : I just wanted to ask you, try not to check the main cast for each new james bond for now. In that way, you wouldn't know who will be the actor who plays james and be surprised during the watching :) Except, if you already know who will be the next bond and in which movie

Leiter marries that chick in the next one. Petrov's wife. Pushkin.

Your reaction is understandable. Dalton is a pretty tame Bond. The whole film is a bit tame. No Bond-villains, no Bond-girls etc. Our parents generation were so smart...! They saw an actor that wasn't Bond, so they rejected him and forced the studio to put Bond back in. That's what we should've done with Daniel Craig. To save us from 15 years with that blonde cry-baby and his family problems.