mine too. I'm proud to say I can see the house I was born in during the opening scene too. The ski/cello chase, the Necros fights, the score, all amazing. I think the only thing it lacks is a strong Alpha villain.
Q is like that college professor that is required to do classroom hours to keep their research grants. All he wants to do is play with his toys, but *sometimes* the university demands that he go out and "help people".
"Dalton's Bond doesn't necessarily seem to enjoy any aspect of this." I like that, and this is why he's my favourite Bond, because he brings the world-weariness of Bond's character from Fleming's novels into play for the first time. Bond in the novels DOES NOT enjoy being a double-o, he very much is just doing a job. (I believe Dalton is on record as saying he wanted to bring more of the novels' characterization into his portrayal). Though "unofficial," an excellent example of this is "James Bond The Authorized Biography" written by John Pearson, which depicts Bond near the end of his career, disillusioned in the extreme by MI6 and the British establishment in general, as he describes his adventures from his own perspective and how he got into the service in the first place, which explains a lot about his future character. An excellent read, and highly recommended.
When I was thinking about how I feel about Dalton's performance, I was thinking that he comes across as more human than the others. He's not enjoying himself doing all these things. And a real person really shouldn't.
Fun fact: the "ridiculous" sniper rifle Bond uses early in the film is a WA2000, produced by Walther, makers of the PPK. So, literally on-brand for Bond. Also an exceptionally high quality sniper's rifle as well.
Also ludicrously rare and expensive, even back when they were in current production. They only ended up making 176 of them and they started at $9k, in 1982 money. Adjusted for inflation, it’s a $25,000 gun, base price. If I remember correctly, the version used in this movie is a .300 Win Mag first variant, which I believe is the rarest combination. That would have pegged the scale for prices and is worth around $75k today.
It appears in a few video games as well; Agent 47 uses a lawyer-friendly version in the Hitman games, and it's in Team Fortress 2 as one of the Sniper's unlockable weapons.
About time he gets the recognition he deserves. Necros is absolutely deadly and that's one of the most evenly-matched fights in the entire series. He very nearly saved the day!
Completely agree with both of you! Green four is super awesome and has epic fighting skills(he’s a retired MI6 agent) and he was defo the bodyguard of Koskov. They really need to fire that idiot base guard who ignored green four.
Good news! No need for any silences as Green Four doesn't die. There's a radio message after Necros leaves that says there were 2 casualties from the explosion and 1 other casualty (the chef Necros strangles), so Green Four survived the attack, although with some nasty scars.
@@chrisdewgong I completely agree! In my view chef was killed, man on stairs who got practically hit by the explosive bottle and fell from the stairs died, one of the gardeners was hospitalised and the other suffered non-hospital-requiring injuries. I imagine the real milkman’s death hadn’t been discovered yet. And Green four was hospitalised.
It was genuinely a reaction to the AIDS & HIV scare of the mid 80's, which was a constant in the media of the time. Eon consciously made Bond be seen not to be engaging in casual sex with multiple Women. He was a 'Safe Sex' Bond.
Plus the bond of the novels was actually very much a conservative civil servant who only had one woman per book and was not the promiscuous hedonist of the films which after I read the novels (which I absolutely love btw) I kinda started to hate.
Vastly, vastly underrated movie. I loved seeing it show up on RLM Re:View. Because it’s one of my favorites from that era. Great cast, great writing, and just fun from beginning to end.
I won't go as far as saying that Rocketeer is underrated. Personally, I reserve such a label for films that accomplish something remarkable. The film is a nod to grade B serials of the 30's and not much else.
I remember seeing an interview with Dalton after this came out and the reporter asked, "What was with the German accent at the end of the film?" He explained that they filmed the climax first, and since he was surrounded by Nazis and Nazi flags, he said, "What the hell?" However, that film is great primarily for the Nazi propaganda film about Our New Airforce. Priceless.
Remington Steele: 1) the hook is that, rather than Pierce Brosnan playing the guy she got to pretend to be Remington Steele, he is a con man who just started to pretend he was. And since Mr. Steele was entirely fictional, she couldn't prove that he wasn't without outing herself. And he turn out to be kinda useful. Throughout the whole series, she never finds out what his real name is. 2) the second hook is that he has seen every murder mystery movie ever made, so his contribution to solving cases is figuring out which movie this case is just like, then using the solution from the movie. So he's sort of a mystery-nerd version of Miss Marple.
I was (and probably still will) going to say that Graham kind of has it backwards. Remington Steele was a phantom entity (like Charlie from Charlie's Angels) BEFORE Brosnan's con man deduced the ruse the PI was using and "revealed" himself to be the reclusive Steele.
When I played the last couple of "Hitman" games the section with Necros the milkman offing people with improvised weapons, such as the headphones and exploding milk, changing costumes from victims and hiding the bodies in a freezer makes me seriously wonder if the people at IO Interactive are fans of this film.
That’s exactly what came to mind when I first saw this movie. It has other parts that have certainly influenced other media like the Hercules plane fight. Uncharted 3 had a similar re-enactment of the scene. GTA San Andreas and GTA 5 also have a similarly shot segment of gameplay that takes place on an open cargo bay of a plane. There just wasn’t a fight sequence on it.
I also think green four (partially retired MI6 agent/ butler) vs necros is like Hitman vs guards. And Hitman has pretended to be other voices, and I obviously agree with all other points!
I still like Brosnan better, but he was given one good movie. And even Goldeneye hasn’t aged as well as I thought, having seen it fairly recently on the big (or a big-ish) screen at a local theater.
@@Activated_Complex Pierce Brosnan got screwed by bad scripts. Goldeneye is really good but then his movies get progressively worse. Though to be fair Tomorrow Never Dies is my favorite movie of his haha.
He definitely was! His take held up better than Pierce’s did as well. His movies have gained a better following over time whereas most of Pierce’s are overlooked. Although TWINE is certainly also an underrated movie.
2:03:01 You called, I answer! (I'm not a Civil War reenactor). Whittaker's sort of right here, or at least he's following the popular consensus of Gettysburg. The battle was a major victory for the Union, but an enduring criticism of General George Meade (and a major reason why Lincoln eventually fired him) was that Meade didn't follow up on his advantage. After the battle Meade basically let Robert E. Lee withdraw unmolested, for fear of taking more casualties from rebel ambushes (a mistake that Meade and most other Union generals of the Army of the Potomac kept making). Had Meade pursued and destroyed Lee's army it would have very quickly been the end of the rebellion. In Meade's defense, casualties for that battle (like most in that war) were staggeringly high and he had to deal with public opinion as much as anything else. Additionally he was always dealing with the fear that if he screwed up and lost too much of his army, Washington D.C. would be undefended. So yeah Whittaker's kind of right, I guess he's playing the Union as immediately counterattacking following 'Pickett's Charge.' I apologize for this wall of text and entirely unsolicited explanation that no one really wanted.
Meade was never fired. He remained officially commander of the Army of the Potomac until the end of the war. However, in 1864 Grant was promoted lieutenant general and commander of the entire Union army. Grant chose to accompany the Army of the Potomac and made his headquarters with it. So in reality, while Meade was in direct tactical command of the Army of the Potomac and its unit's movements Grant was in charge of overall operational and strategic planning. Meade kind of became like the captain of a naval vessel with the admiral onboard.
Also the origin of wienerschnitzel (as in Vienna schnitzel), a (the?) national dish of Austria and a sort of specialty of the country and specifically Vienna. For anyone who's never made that connection.
This is probably my favorite Bond movie. Also, I love the trope (which comes up in anime a lot as well) of "Professional killer is amazingly good at shooting game, wins giant stuffed animal prize for their date."
One neat thing about this particular outing for Bond is that we see 007 acting in his capacity as an assassin. Which is what his License to Kill is all about. Both assignments he is given by M, if we don’t count the exercise that opens the film, are to take someone out. And while this makes the casting of Dalton perfect, it also gives Bond a chance to show that he is not a robot, but an Intelligence Officer who takes the shot when he is satisfied that it is the right move in the moment. They could send any number of assets who are merely crack shots, they sent 007 for his intuition and experience.
I think Timothy Dalton was brilliant as Bond. I suspect that The Living Daylights has taken Lazenby's place in most reviled Bond films (or most reviled Bond.) But he remains my favourite Bond simply because he actually takes the darkness in the character and shows the audience exactly what sort of man somoene like Bond would be.
Totally agree that Dalton's humor in this is underrated and the action sequences are fantastic. Necros is also such an underrated villain. The scene where Saunders dies is one of my all time fav Bond moments. It has Bond actually looking like a pissed off crazy person for once, love it! :)
Yeah for the first bit, she just pretends he's her boss and she works for him but no one ever sees him (because he doesn't exist), kind of like a Charlie's Angels thing
Thank you! I was about to make that comment when I saw yours. As you indicated, the hook of the story was that Remington Steele was made up so that the female lead could land big, high-dollar clients. All goes as planned until the mystery man shows up claiming to be the real Remington Steele trapping the female lead in her lies and then taking advantage of the situation--both characters exhibiting their own levels of dishonesty. A trivia note, it was rumored that Stephanie Zimbalist was jealous of Pierce Brosnan as she was the headlining star, but the dashing and erudite Bosman was getting all of the notoriety. As the story goes and for whatever reason, by the time Remington Steele ended, Brosnan and Zimbalist were not talking except for when in character.
My favourite thing in this movie is how well the melody of the title song keeps showing up in the rest of the score. I think this is John Barry's masterpiece, to be honest.
Not just the title song, all three of them! All three songs are great pop songs, and Barry adapts them into the score. "If There Was A Man" becomes Kara's beautiful theme. "Where Has Everybody Gone" is Necros' and the baddies. "The Living Daylights is for James during some action scenes.
@@flinx yeah, I got into the soundtrack big time this year, especially the orchestral version of "where has everybody gone" quite sinister and action packed. Also love "Air Bond" one of Barry's finest Bond scores and sadly his last.
He does that with OHMSS as well, and it's really memorable because it's a great theme song which says "shit's about to go down." I.e. the beginning of the ski chase. So good.
Yeah. It's amazing, in retrospect, that all this musical work transpired during Barry's uncordial working relationship with Aha, ultimately driving him to cease association with the Bond franchise, for good.
The Dalton movies were the only ones that I hadn't seen before at all, so this was a new experience, but it's amazing just how much this movie kicks ass.
I realize that this is not a movie many people have seen or remember, but Dalton's turn as villainous German spy playing an actor in Rocketeer was quite good. He was really able to carry off the whole "I am become my mask and have no identity of my own apart from my conviction to my country."
44:01 It's an important detail (I think) that the assassin spoke into the transmitter in a near perfect British Accent especially considering we've witnessed this assassin speak perfectly in 3 different accents. This is an additional detail that further cements the fact that he's highly competent at his job
Correct. Broccoli or Glen mentioned that in interviews. "This is a new James Bond for a new era. He has just one girl, and it's a romance". Although forgetting he banged the woman on the pleasure cruiser. And did he have some 'quality time' with Felix's sexy agents? They seemed to be into Bond. It just felt not to fit with the message of the day, if Bond's constantly sleeping around. Compare to Moore only two years earlier (four birds he def shags).
Fun fact: The bust that Bond topples near the end of the movie, Whittaker remarks is of "that British vulture Wellington," referring to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, hence Whittaker's poetic death in his Waterloo miniature, a pretend-general crushed by a symbol of true British military strength.
Whitaker's Gettysburg "redo" doesn't really make sense. He says Meade was the coward who could have crushed Lee, but it was Confederacy's location that he changed by moving Pickett's Charge. I have to conclude he was just playing both sides, thinking himself better than either.
Well what do you expect from someone who actually blows up his precious hand-painted miniatures with little explosives rather than using dice and tables to determine outcomes .
Man, I never noticed the fascination Bond movies appear to have with oil pipeline pigs. They pop up pretty prominently in The World is Not Enough as well.
I really, really, really like this movie. It's one of those I can still, today, say that I like without feeling ashamed or put a bunch of disclaimers on it. Sure, it's got problems, but it's aged a lot better than most Bond fare.
On the topic of how Bond doesn't engage with real world threats anymore, I think a lot of that has to do with international sales of the film. During the Cold War, I don't think there was any expectation that a studio would be able to sell a western film in Russia or China, or that there was any notable amount of profit to be made in doing so, so why do it? In a post-Cold War situation, notice how Goldeneye IMMEDIATELY took the opportunity to do stuff like shoot in St. Petersburg, paint some Russians as not-bad guys, and otherwise open up the narrative to not make Russia the enemy here. Now in the Daniel Craig era, when selling the film in China is a big deal, you don't want to anger China and lose out on ticket sales by making China or any of their buddies the bad guy. Heck, they didn't even use a real African country's consulate in Casino Royale. So at this stage, I think it's just the desire for escapism but also the Hollywood diplomacy of "don't enrage potential consumers".
I rewatched all the movies two years ago and was impressed by how Octopussy shows the geography of the German border actually matching the real landscape and highway and rail network of the area, since I had lived there for several years. I also checked for The Living Daylights, and this movie is not like that. 1) Bratislava is directly on the border to Austria. It's a 5km drive from the old city center to the border crossing. Bond could meet there in 15 minutes. "What border?" is a nonsensical question. 2) Both Bratislava and Vienna are on the Danube. Both Slovakia and Austria have very impressive mountains, but the Danube valley looks more like the Netherlands or Kansas.
Well, there is one line in Octopussy where they claim that, compared to Berlin, "Karl-Marx-Stadt is further east", which is completely wrong. But I see your point.
I would 100% listen to a From Rewatch With Love spin-off podcast where you two discuss tv shows and movies from the filmographies of the various Bonds.
Sam Neil would have made an excellent 80s' Bond. Anyone having seen Reilly, Ace of Spies or Omen III would recognize that. Timothy Dalton was a great choice though.
I still think Dalton was the right choice. Even though he was a bit clunky with the quips IMO and he looked like an enamoured puppy-dog in his romantic scenes (the Vienna-date-sequence is very un-Bond in my view). Still: He brought gravitas, cynicism and realism back to the character. Things that had been completely lost in the Moore-era.
@@1SaG Yes, the film had originally been written for Moore, so there are some corny carry overs. At least they kept the infamous flying carpet scene out of the film.
@@RobJaskula Sam would of been a GREAT choice but I do think that Timothy did a GREAT job and was underrated. Shame that when I saw the film in 87 (This is the ONLY Bond film that I have seen on the big screen) I rather hated it but I was only 12 at the time and only known as Moore as Bond.
When I was thinking about comparing Dalton's performance to Moore and Connery, the word that popped into my head was "more human". Yes, he's colder and angrier, but given the situations he is in, that is entirely an appropriate reaction. Connery and Moore are both act in ways that are entertainment, but not how we would think a sane human being to feel. And I think I feel similar about Lazenby as well. Brosnan never worked for me, and Craig's version of Bond seems to be made deliberate as inhuman as possible.
I'd say Craig's version of Bond has all the human beaten out of him by the end of Casino Royale, and the flashbacks let us know that a good bit of it was harshly dealt with before the movie even began. Might be why Casino Royale is my favourite of the Craigs, because it's the process, while the rest just have the result.
Just wanted to chime in that the podcast is great overall, and this has been one of my favourite episodes so far. Matt Griffith's editing in particular is very entertaining even compared to an already very fun and enjoyable podcast, so individual props to Griffiths as well on top of it all. This is the content I personally crave.
An interesting addition to the 'matching the film to what the stunt unit shot:' The aircraft in the big Necros airborne fight changes between two different planes. They try to keep it well hidden, but it's hard to hide when the number of engines changes.
On the cigarette - he also smokes one in the first scene with Moneypenny! It definitely feels weird. I guess they thought it might add to the gritty realism in 1987.
Dalton wanted to take it back to Fleming's Bond, which included him being a smoker. Dalton was a smoker in real life so that helped. Still it looks weird smoking in a science lab, even in 1987! I'm sure it has to be pristine there. Not sure if this would have continued if Dalton had played Bond into the 90's, as Licence To Kill contains a we don't recommend smoking notice in the credits (despite all those years of Marlboro product placement). And Brosnan calls it a filthy habit in Tomorrow Never Dies.
For me, the Dalton Bonds are a departure from the "Bond Movie" genre. This one is a cold war spy thriller with James Bond in it, complete with defection, counter defection, deceptions and people on opposite sides working together to prevent escalation of tension between the nuclear powers. Licence to Kill is an 80's action move with James Bond, complete with over-the-top car and plane chases, massive explosions and a South American drug lord villain. That does not make either of them bad movies, not by a long shot, but it does make them less less Bond-ish. Realism is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but to me Dalton's Bond is the only iteration of the character who would possibly make it as a spy. More to the point, he's the only one of the Bond iterations I can imagine as a scalphunter in John LeCarré's novels, Possibly from the same school as Fawn, but that's neither here nor there. Fun fact: The background info that Pushkin gave about Смерть Шпионам is true. It was a program set up during the latter half of the second world war to root out spies, saboteurs and collaborators by the NKVD. In the books however, it is the organ of the Soviet intelligence community that's always trying to subvert the west and coming up with increasingly convoluted plots to kill James Bond. By the way: You skipped my favorite quip in the movie. When Pushkin realizes that James Bond, a British spy and assassin, is in his hotel room with a gun and his serious face on, he still has the composure to plainly assert: "I take it this is not a social call, 007."
This movie reminds me of that CIA agent series, who is played by Harrison Ford and one of the Baldwin's, I think. Hunt for Red October is one of them, I believe.
"and coming up with increasingly convoluted plots to kill James Bond." Wrong. SMERSH makes ONE plan to kill Bond, in From Russia with Love. Some of the other villains (like Le Chiffe, Mr. Big, Hugo Drax, Auric Goldfinger) are working for/with SMERSH, but none of them are trying to kill Bond because the Soviets want it, the organisation itself only tries to kill Bond ones in FRWL.
Re: actual entity conflict, note that, just as they de-SMERSH'd the novels that got adapted in the 60s (e.g. FRWL), note that Octopussy, AVTAK and The Living Daylights all go out of their way to have the villain working for the Russians be a renegade.
Yes, For Your Eyes Only was the only time Bond fought a villain whose plans directly benefited the Soviet Union. The producers were never keen on Bond fighting Russia but didn't care if Red China was offended. Goldfinger, Blofeld (You Only Live Twice), and Scaramanga all worked for China.
@@ricardocantoral7672 Maybe because they didn't take China seriously back then. Once China reappeared in a Bond film (Tomorrow Never Dies) having become an actual military superpower, it had to be one corrupt general and his crazy friend from the West that were the villains, very similarly to the Russians in the 80s Bond films.
The most important aspect of Dalton's portrayal is that James Bond is a guy who hates his job. That aspect of the books wasn't that present in Connery's or Moore's portrayals and is at best vague in OHMSS, but it's something that Craig and even Brosnan ran with.
I feel like the sniper/pipeline scene would be a perfect pre-title scene, ending with the title drop- “whoever she was, must’ve scared the living daylights out of her”- boom, into the opening song. I like the existing opening scene, but this one would tie better into the movie and provide better characterization for bond upfront.
Pushkin's mistress was played by Virginia Hey, and Australian actress who was in The Road Warrior as the lady with the crossbow and Farscape as Zhaan. I noticed they skipped a certain part of her scene in the hotel room, maybe that's for the best.
I was really surprised they skipped this given how major a tonal shift it is. It’s probably the strongest ‘Dalton is not Moore’ moment in the whole film. Moore would never have done that.
Don’t forget M’s line in “Casino Royale”, which pertained to the real-life conflicts of 2006: “When they analyzed the stock market after 9/11, the CIA discovered a massive shorting of airline stocks. When the stocks hit bottom on 9/12, somebody made a fortune”.
Ah yes, the Walther WA2000, the most rare gun that everyone seems to have. (They only ever made 176 of them because the H&K PSG-1 won the trials done in Germany for a police sniper rifle after the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.)
Sam Neil was also the titular character in the film Merlin. Which I only saw, because it was playing on a plane I was traveling on. Was pretty good, though. I just never would have heard of it otherwise.
About Remington Steele: Graham kind of has it backwards here. She didn't get a con man to pose as Remington Steele. She had been pretending that "her boss" was always too busy to meet with her clients in person successfully for a while, leaving cigar smoke and half-drunk whiskey in "his office" as supposed proof that he was "just here". Brosnan's character figures out what's going on and insinuates himself into her previously one-woman operation so publicly that she can't deny him without revealing her deception. It's a great premise.
The Living Daylights is really underrated; it’s one of my top five favorite James Bond movies. I think it’s really great, easily the best Bond movie of the 1980s. It’s got lots of good action, humor, the gadgets are believable, and the plot, while convoluted towards the end, is a very classic spy movie plot. Is this the only Bond movie where Bond goes to a real life war zone, in this case Soviet occupied Afghanistan (obviously all filmed in Morocco)? Also Timothy Dalton probably plays Bond closest to how he is in the books at least until Daniel Craig. Sean Connery’s earliest movies were sort of close too but he quickly made Bond his own character. Great episode, keep up the good work!
Well, it's obvious that they did not film in Afghanistan but I could not tell where the film was shot until I looked up the shooting locations. Regarding Craig, he isn't Fleming's Bond because he wasn't a sexually confused, emotional wreck. Yes, Fleming's Bond had emotional baggage but Craig's Bond is on a whole other level of fucked up.
@@ricardocantoral7672 that’s what I meant that it was obvious the movie wasn’t filmed in Afghanistan not that Morocco was where those scenes were shot. Figured I’d cover all the bases so some genius wouldn’t “uhhh you know it wasn’t actually filmed in Afghanistan right?” Lol. Good point about Craig being too much of a wreck. However I think his cold personality and willingness to be brutal are close to Fleming’s Bond.
I'm secretly hoping that when they get to Goldeneye they open the review reviewing the videogame as though the podcast was always a videogame review channel.
What I find interesting in this movie is that the Bond's relationship with Karla relationship is much more 'brotherly' that lovers. I like the fact they spend a lot of time with each other and I get the feeling that he cares about her and is looking to get her out of the situation which is why he falls for her drugging him.
When I think of things that Dalton has done outside of Bond, I always think of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, because nothing gives me more joy than listening to Dalton say "The Blue Monkey."
There's a great exchange between Bond and Kara after they subdue the jailers in the Russian stockade: Kara: "James, you were fantastic! We're free!" Bond: "Kara, we're inside a Russian base in the middle of Afghanistan." Kara: "Well, at least we're together." Bond: "Great." That scene always cracks me up.
They literally overanalyze every scene from the Craig movies and every single flipping face they give,, Yet can’t even describe the whole scene OR even get the dialogue right for this movie? I guess we figured out who the Craig and Moore dick sucker/ass kissers are..
2:06:00 The "Diplomatic Bag" is a marked and locked container transferred between diplomatic missions and the parent country that is immune to search and seizure via international law
This is probably my favorite Bond film. I think I will have to watch 'For Your Eyes Only' now since you guys say their tone is similar. Loving the podcast.
I always thought Timothy Dalton was my favorite bond, but that might have been out of a desire to be different. It's probably been 20 years since I've seen either of his films, but I remember liking them a lot. That Russian assassin is doing a seriously good impression of Agent 47 in his first scene. Kill a guy, dump his body, take his clothes, pretend to be him to get into the next security area, rinse and repeat. Evac via chopper in a lab coat. Putting the body in the ice chest is just peak Hitman.
I saw Dalton much later, and thought he was fantastic, but I think almost a little 'too ahead of it's time'. The more violent Bond is much more in keeping with modern movies, but was probably too sudden a shift for audiences at the time
Re: "Remington Steele", you're not exactly correct. Laura created the fake persona of her "boss" to bring in business. She, her partner/boyfriend, and their secretary did the work, while telling people that Mr. Steele was unavailable and preferred to stay out of the public eye. Then, during one case, Brosnan's anonymous con artist stumbled into the situation, figured out that "Steele" didn't exist, and inserted himself into the role. Laura reluctantly accepted this, purely for business reasons. But, of course, a romance developed over the course of the show. (The original partner & the secretary were gone by the end of season 1.) The show was OK, in general. Tom Baker showed up as a bad guy once, and Ephram Zimbalist Jr. showed up a couple of times as the mentor of "Steele".
While I do enjoy this movie a lot it does have some tonal rough spots. The thing is, the film makers were not entirely sure what kind of Bond they were going for when they wrote the film so they tried to have it somewhere in the middle. Then when Dalton was cast they reportedly rewrote the script slightly to make it fit the more gruff, Fleming-type Bond that Dalton wanted to play.However, there still are some scenes that would not be all that out of place in a Moore Bond film, so it does feel like a transitional film.
I love the lighter tone they take in this Bond film. It's nice to see the filmmakers having fun after the serious nature of the last couple of Bond films.
"Ghetto Blaster" was a legit colloquial term interchangeable with "Boom Box" in the 80's...although it was often derogatory...also the name of a bad 1989 action movie.
Dalton's "humor" usually works for me based on context. When he's quipping in the car scene he's less making quips out of pure humor and more due to the situation. She doesn't know he's a spy w/a government super car, and he maintains that facade with those quips while accomplishing that "cool under pressure" thing Bond does. The Roger era turned the quips into pure comedy each time, but go back to Connery the quips were character driven at times. "Won't be needing this... old man" just after a brutal situation. Plus his "Bond, James Bond" delivery in the pre title is legitimately funny and Dalton knew playing it straight made the comedy work. The situation is funny, Bond is all business despite this ridiculous boat situation we're witnessing as the audience.
2:04:00 It should be noted that Bond actually DOES go for body shots first. You even see the bullet scars on Whitaker's uniform during the "now have my 80" close up. Hence the follow-up quip about "sorry to say your pop-gun is no match for the latest body armor" indicating that he was in fact wearing heavy body armor under his uniform, in addition to the clear shield on his gun.
Before I watched this I could have sworn I'd seen all the Bond movies, I do not think until now that I've seen any Dalton films. By the end of the movie...I think he might be my favourite Bond?
I remember hearing somewhere that by the 80s, Roger Moore had been pushing for Desmond Llewellyn to get more screen time, which is one of the reasons why he appeared so much more from 1981 to 1989.
