yendi

So, with

docorion in town this weekend (and thus keeping

shadesong occupied), I had something I relish and almost never get -- the house to myself!

Which meant I could accomplish all the things I've been meaning to do: Sitting around in my underwear, playing the PS2 without interruption, and watching Bond movies. :-)

Two of those were the two best Roger Moore movies (The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, if you really had to ask)

And I did something I swore I'd never do again: I watched License to Kill.

I'd sworn never to watch it again, even if it was included in the one Bond DVD box set I got before they went out of print again (and that, more than anything else, is why I want the new Casino Royale to ramp up production, so I can complete my collection). But after

averyslave's recent look at the Bond series failed to rank it last or even in the bottom five, I figured I'd give it another go.

Conclusion: Still the worst Bond ever.

Oh, there are good moments, and good intentions (until Brosnan, Dalton was the only Bond actor who'd ever channeled rage into the part), but that's about it.

The flaws start with the villains, from the hyper Beicio Del Toro as a young punk to the overparanoid drug lord played by Robert "Mr. Bad Movie" Davi who trusts nobody he's known forever, but does trust the mysterious ex-British agent he meets under mysterious circumstances who sneaks out of his place. Throw in Wayne Fucking Newton as a corrupt new-age spiritualist, Anthony Zerbie as the drug-running middleman, and (most annoying of all) Anthony Starke (yes, Tony Stark -- it's Iron Man!) as Truman-Lodge, the most annoying bean-counter ever, and you've got a group of bad guys who could put The Tick's Mr. Exciting to sleep.

Then there are the assorted plotholes, from the killing of Sharkey (which, while well-deserved in the sense that he was an annoying and useless character, and also good for angering Bond, made no sense, in that if the bad guys tracked him down and figured out that he was in on the first drug raid, how did they not catch Bond's involvement?), to the bank that lets the corrupt president know about a huge new deposit, but not a large withdrawal, to tacked-on plotlines involving a drug bust and a missile deal that are there solely to delay Bond's revenge. Add in Robert Brown's M (worst M ever), the whole "Q is officially unofficially helping" crap, the ludicrous opening scene (sure, they'll fly a chopper to block a wedding and get one more guy for a raid, because, you know, those FBI guys don't have partners or entire teams to handle things), and, just to make us walk out of the theatre really wanting to kill ourselves, Patti LaBelle's "If You Asked me To" playing inexplicably over the closing credits, and you've got a film that makes me want to dangle my feet in a shark tank.

The few things that I liked: Both Bond girls were fun, if nothing special. And, unusually, both lived (of course, no mention is made of the fact that both of them spent some serious time helping drug lords -- that fact gets overlooked just a wee bit). The underwater scenes here are actually amongst the best in any Bond flick, with realistic fights and Bond not playing superhero. And Bond's flambéing of the drug lord is quite nice (even if it comes after one of the silliest chase scenes in the series). And I do love Felix as a character. But that's way too little for me. Seriously, bad as some of the other flicks in the series have been, they all have more going for them than this one.