The Living Daylights

The Living Daylights, new boy Timothy Dalton’s first Bond outing, gets off to a rocking start with a pre-credits sequence on Gibraltar, and culminates in a witty final showdown with Joe Don Baker’s arms dealer, set on a model battlefield full of toy soldiers. While the Aston Martin model whizzing through the car chase has been updated for the late 1980s–including lethal lasers and other deadly gizmos–the plot is pretty standard issue, maybe a little more cluttered and unfocused than usual, involving arms, drugs and diamond smuggling. Nevertheless, the action-formula firmly in place, this one rehearses the moves with ease and throws in some fine acting. Maryam d’Abo, playing a cellist-cum-spy, is the classy main squeeze for 007 (uncharacteristically chaste for once).