An Open Apology to the Second Best Bond

Looking back on the world you can often find yourself rethinking things thought before. For years, we knew Caddyshack was the greatest comedy of all time. We knew that Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time. We knew that Abraham Lincoln was probably the greatest president, even though the first and only civil war as on his watch and he had a relatively short McTerm.

And we knew that Timothy Dalton was the worst Bond.

That was just a straight-up fact. The only people who disagreed were the ones who saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Dalton’s Mum and Dad. The Widely Known And Agreed Upon ranking was probably something like this:

1. Sean Connery
2. Pierce Brosnan
3. Daniel Craig
4. Roger Moore
5. Timothy Dalton
6. George Lazenby

There is room for interpretation, primarily among 2-4. Brosnan played the most Connery-esque Bond, suave, unaffected, and proceeding with a smirk. Craig is the new-look gritty Bond. Roger Moore gets a lot of love for longevity (he made the most Bonds, 7), but only two of them were actually any good (Man With The Golden Gun and Spy Who Loved Me). Timothy Dalton was only in two Bonds, the second of which being the last for nearly seven years, and considering they were coming out every two years for the previous 30, that’s a big deal.

Let’s make something perfectly clear: Licence (sic) to Kill was a piece of crap. It turned Bond into a weird, Batman-style vigalante, and the only reason it was even recognizable as a 007 film was the theme song. But every Bond has made a crappy movie (Craig hasn’t, but will). Before we crucify Dalton for that film, remember this:

Diamonds Are Forever (Connery): This is the one that when it comes up on the TBS marathon, you still watch it, but face it, you’re not happy. There was the ridiculous lunar rover chase, the Two Blofelds, Jimmy Dean, of sausage fame, ACTING, and instead of Monte Carlo, Bond trapses through the Circus Circus. This is how much people love Connery. They give him a pass for this steaming turd.

OHMSS (Lazenby): Old George wasn’t any good. Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas at the top of their game. But Lazenby was atrocious, and Bond gets…married. Let’s move forward.

A View To A Kill (Moore): This one often gets ignored by the marathons because it was just that incredible. A sixty year old, wrinkly, podgy, slightly senile Roger getting dominated, like the D in BDSM, by six foot, sinewy, shredded ebony warrior Grace Jones. You also have Christopher Walken beginning to enter the Accidental Caracature Stage of his career* dying when his blimp crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge. Unbelievable.

Licence (sic) To Kill (Dalton): We’ve discussed this.

Die Another Day (Brosnan): The closest fusion between Bond and Japanese Anime. Lots of lasers, robotic suits, a ridiculous ice castle fight…thing, and, of course, the windsurfing on a glacier CGI apocalypse. The whole thing looked like a vehicle for a Halle Berry “Jinx” spin-off from hell.

*Walken’s career has moved through the following progression: 1. Oscar Winning Actor (Deer Hunter), Accidental Caracature (Batman Returns, Nick of Time), Intentional Caracature (Mouse Hunt, Cowbell Sketch)

That was a long explanation to make one single point. But the next is exceedingly valid: check out The Living Daylights.

Most people haven’t seen it. It’s NEVER a part of the marathons. Often, when it does come on, no one recognizes it. There are some strange parts: on the negative side, the defection-fake-defection storyline is a little convoluted, the awesome Smiert Spionem storyline kinda gets neglected, there’s a lot of mid-eighties Mujuadheen love (which just makes you feel weird to root for them to repell the invading infidels), and Joe Don Baker is Moore-era comically ridiculous.

But Dalton is incredible.

Something so strange happens while you watch The Living Daylights. The guy playing Bond… is acting. It’s not like watching a Bond movie, it’s like watching a guy really, actually win awards with this stuff. The character is interesting, human, flawed, affected, real. Daniel Craig is acting as well, that’s part of the whole idea of the new Bond reboot. But at best, he’s as good, not better, than Dalton. But there really isn’t a benchmark for great acting in Bond movies because there isn’t much. Moore’s big moment was in The Spy Who Loved Me, when he tells Anya he killed her boyfriend. It’s a B at best. Connery never really had to act, because that wasn’t the idea. Brosnan wasn’t bad, but the character he was playing was the reason they decided to beat the hell out of Craig’s Bond.

The shame about Dalton is that he never had a great one. Connery had the Big Three (From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball), Moore had the two pretty good ones mentioned before, Brosnan had The World Is Not Enough which, when you Men In Black erase Denise Richards from memory, was one of the best ever, and Craig had Casino Royale. Dalton had half of a good one. But as far as an espionage movie, as being something more than Moore, the list should probably look like this:

1. Connery
2. Dalton
3. Craig
4. Brosnan
5. Moore
6. Lazenby

So give the guy another shot. It’s worth the two hours of Joe Don Baker.