Although I was initially skeptical with Timothy Dalton in the role of "James Bond", I must say that this movie was a definite improvement over the last couple of films starring Roger Moore. Now don't get me wrong, I still think that Roger Moore performed quite well and my criticism is not directed at him in any way. It's just that in some cases the overall direction seemed to drift too far away from the basic substance which made James Bond so unique in the first place. In any case, this movie essentially begins with "James Bond" (Timothy Dalton) successfully bringing a high-ranking KGB official by the name of "General Georgi Koskov" (Jeroen Crabbe) over to the West. Then upon interrogating General Koskov the British secret service is told that another high-ranking KGB official, "General Leonid Pushkin" (John Rhys-Davies) has apparently gone insane and has issued an order to assassinate numerous British and American spies in order to provoke a war between the Soviet Union and NATO. Unfortunately, prior to interrogating him more fully, General Koskov is suddenly kidnapped by Soviet agents and subsequently whisked back to Moscow. This turn of events makes it imperative for the British government to act quickly and Agent 007 is immediately tasked with assassinating General Pushkin before his plan can take effect. But before he does that James Bond wants to interrogate another person who might be able to give him some more information-a female sniper named "Kara Milovy" (Maryam d'Abo) who attempted to kill General Koskov before he could defect. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this is a more dark and serious effort which still manages to entertain fairly well. I especially liked the overall storyline and the performance of Timothy Dalton who quite capably managed to fill an extremely difficult vacancy. In short, this turned out to be a pretty good James Bond movie and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.
Review of The Living Daylights
