I just saw "The Living Daylights".
Quite a turnaround for Bond movies. Leaving behind the more over the top and fantastic aspects of the Moore movies, The Living Daylights follows a very solid structure, with one of the most down to earth plots in the series. It also manageg to keep me guessing about the villain's plan without being too convoluted or contrived. The script is surprisingly well written, and it manages to deliver some great scenes that take advantage of the spy setting. Maybe the only problem it has is how dated some of the setpieces are, but I guess I can't be too hard on the movie for that. Timothy Dalton plays a much more grounded and professional Bond, with less of the glamour and theatrics of Moore or Connery. His acting makes a lot of the movie work. The scene in which he has Pushkin pinned down and he threatens to execute him is a rather chilling scene, reinforcing his role as a spy and hired assassin. The rest of the cast, however, is not that great. Maryam d'Abo is not a particularly good or noteworthy Bond girl (though she's smarter than usual and actively participates in the plot), and the whole cello subplot feels somewhat tacky, I kept expecting the cello to have some sort of importance for the plot, but it never really has it. The villains are also pretty weak. The three antagonists range between generic and annoying, which is not a good thing. In particular, the arms dealer and the "defector" aren't particularly intimidating or threatening, leaving all of that work to the main hencheman, which does have a really good infiltration scene in the country mansion. Also, the super car didn't really match the tone of the movie. It's one thing that Bond has a couple of hi-tech gadgets, and another thing entirely to have the fucking gadgetmobile.
Overall, it's a solid movie, and a welcomed change of pace in regards to Bond movies. A solid 8/10.
