MovieChat Forums > Licence to Kill (1989) Discussion > Just kinda....cheap-looking?

Just kinda....cheap-looking?

posted 3 years ago by Ripkens25 (1901)
18 replies | jump to latest

I mean...look at the production values in Skyfall. Heck, the whole sequence in Macau alone tops anything in LTK by a longshot. For starters, the villains.....

Everett McGill as Killifer is just a dopey, annoying guy who sounds annoying and is never much of a menace or threat. I guess I'm just used to the eccentric, exotic...foreign villains with the cool foreign accent (rather than a Texas accent).....in their exotic lairs.

And then there's....Robert Davi? Really? He was the go-to, B-level actor of the 80's. So when i saw him show-up as the main badguy in LTK I thought: "Really? THAT guy??"

Heck, even the guy who played Milton Crest" was a poor man's Dennis Hopper. And don't even get me started on the appearance of...Wayne Newton?? You can't have a big name performer like that playing a badguy in a Bond movie. That would be like having Elton John portray a drug smuggler in the movie.

And did we really need Pricilla effin Barnes from Three's Company as Felix's wife for f_cks sake??
Talk about taking us out of the moment. Every time I saw her I automatically thought of Teri...from Three's Company. They should have gotten some incredibly hot, unknown exotic model to play the part. Not a ......SITCOM star.

The sets looked cheap. The locales looked like back lots at a sound stage. Even the Bond girls were just...meh.

And Dalton as Bond is....stuffy.

With this movie coming out in the 80's, it needed more of that high-gloss, exotic, visually stunning 80's production value. Your average Miami Vice episode had more spice.

[–] TMC-4 (19411) 3 years ago

I wouldn't say that Priscilla Barnes wasn't "hot enough" to play a Bond girl. Priscilla during her Three's Company hey-day, kind of gave off a Michelle Pfeiffer vibe:
https://itsfordad.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/priscilla-barnes-threes-company.jpeg?w=584

https://d9nvuahg4xykp.cloudfront.net/8434477423450780320/2604943618225897370.jpg

https://cdn.shoppingcartthumbnails.com/hollywoodshow/0/catalog/product/0/1/010_53.jpg

https://www.wallofcelebrities.com/celebrity/priscilla-barnes/pictures/xxlarge/priscilla-barnes_244798.jpg

[–] Ripkens25 (1901) 3 years ago

She was just an odd choice. She was too familiar as Terri from Three’s Company. Also...just kinda bland and vanilla. But hey, she wasn’t really even a Bond girl, per se. She just had a tiny role in the opening as Felix’s wife.

[–] TMC-4 (19411) 3 years ago

Incidentally prior to Three's Company, Priscilla Barnes worked with Roger Moore in Les Seducteurs:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CMw5OXVHWAJ/

[–] Ace_Spade (9346) 3 years ago

It does look like they didn't spend a lot of money. I guess they were going for "gritty" or something. But you've got to remember that movies today have a different look to them that is independent of how much money was being spent or how "cheap" it looks, so that probably is contributing to your feeling here.

Overall, I really like Licence to Kill and I think it's underrated. Dalton does a great performance (so I disagree there), Bond eating away at the villain's forces from within is neat spy-work, and Q's expanded role is so good. As to the casting, Robert Davi did a good job with a pretty sinister villain, and his thug henchmen like Killifer and Crest seemed scumbag enough to be part of a cartel. Plus Benicio Del Toro kills it. He's one of the most menacing, creepy Bond sidekick villains of all time.

Okay, I'll give you Pam as a ho-hum Bond girl, but the other lady was pretty great.

I've long felt that Dalton's Bond was ahead of his time. People didn't want this guy in the '80s, but then the "serious Bond" comes along with Daniel Craig and everybody's doing backflips talking about how great he is. Casino Royale is a much better script than Licence to Kill, and CR and Skyfall both have way higher production values and glitz, but LtK is a solid spy thriller, in my opinion, and one of the better 007 outings.

[–] AnubisRaydeen (7897) 3 years ago

There are a few things to like in this but I agree that it has a cheaper look to it. Overall I rank it low. The semi-truck wheely (among other lame parts) drags it down to the level of the lesser Moore films for me.

[–] FootOfDavros (6716) 3 years ago

Even the actual movie poster looks cheap!

Just look at it - it's like a visual premonition of what you'd be able to conjure up in photoshop circa 2001 😂

[–] TMC-4 (19411) 3 years ago

The movie was originally going to be called Licence Revoked. But apparently, MGM at virtually the last minute, had it changed to Licence to Kill. They were concerned that most Americans would think that the title "Licence Revoked" would reference your driving privileges being taken away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VglxyWVKUro

[–] FootOfDavros (6716) a year ago

Just to clarify, as it's been updated on here, the poster I was referring to was this one:-
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODY3M2I0NGItYzJhNy00M2NiLThhMDgtNjZkNjA1NTQzMDM4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTIzOTk5ODM@._V1_.jpg

The one they're showing now though is arguably even worse - they've just stuck that picture of the two girls right over the the top of Dalton's legs! And the background is just grey from presumably some promo photoshoot they did at the time. Looks terrible!

[–] ebhaynz (3526) 3 years ago

You're right, EON lost their way for awhile, just shows how important it is to stick with high quality as it's obvious they did something to save a few million here. I saw this in Oklahoma City in the summer of 1989 it's one of those movies where I just tuned out and simply waited for the credits to roll. I barely remember the plot that's for sure.

[–] WilloughbyStain (194) 2 years ago

EON have always maintained that they kept the budgets for all the films from Moonraker through to Licence to Kill at around $30million, the problem being that $30million went an awful lot further in 1979 than it did in 1989. and certain Tax Benefits (e.g. the Eady Levy) disappeared in that time too. To some extent they were able to hide that for a while, but it caught up with them here.

[–] WilloughbyStain (194) 2 years ago

I don't think it's really fair to compare it to Skyfall, which came out over twenty years later when the budgets for Bond movies, and all Blockbuster movies, had ballooned; even adjusting for inflation, Skyfall had around 3 times the budget of this film. What's notable is that the film often looks pretty cheap even compared to previous 80s Bond films, which themselves generally didn't have the production value or scope of most of the 60s and 70s films. I think it actually works pretty well as a striped down, toughed up Bond film for the first third or so, but when its trying to convince us that Bond stabbing packets of cocaine under water is a great, exciting Bond set piece, it starts to fall apart. I loved it when I was in my early teens though.

[–] millsey72 (9547) 2 years ago

This movie looked anything but cheap. More cash was shown onscreen in this one than any other Bond movie

[–] BOandBarbecue (2264) a year ago

robert davi is great actors!

this film problem is they try to make it like 80s action film instead of bonds film.

it is still ok. just average film.