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Also agree. This is my only quarm with LTK.....particularly the airport scene and the crap hire car.
Oh god it does. If they cut out one or even both of the truck stunts it'd be much tighter and more effective.
They probably could have cut the bit when he drives through the fire. Is it possible to even get that kind of truck to balance on it's back wheels like that?
OHMSS and GF (though I dislike the latter) have a glossy look, but CR? I don't believe it does.
LTK and Bond in it takes a lot of flack, but at the end of the day, the sweaty vest 80's were going to be a tough time for Bond. Either Bond would be accused looking out of touch, or that he'd lost the crucial qualities that set him apart.
As an action thriller, it's decent enough, no more than that.
Get what you're saying, was just referring to the resolution between Bond and Sanchez.
The ending definitely needed retooling. I can understand the urge EON felt to end on a happier note with all the characters after such heavy death and violence in the film, but I would have much rather seen the movie end with Bond meeting Felix in the hospital, where the bedridden man questions his old friend about wounds that don't heal. Something along the lines of...
Felix: "Does it ever get easier to deal with, James? The pain...the rage?"
Bond: "Over time, yes. But you can never forget them. Nor would you ever want to."
I'd prefer a quiet moment of the sort to anything else, and I think it would've really elevated the movie to get an earnest talk between Bond and Felix that directly connected back to the little mention of Tracy that opened the film. It was clear how much of the film was unconsciously driven by Bond feeling sympathy for a man losing his wife on his wedding day, so to end the film with a dialogue that explored the tragedy that binds Bond and Felix would've been powerful. At least to me, really.
It's part of why I think QoS is the most successful film in the same order of LTK, that tells a grounded, brutal story with stripped back elements that never loses itself at any point. LTK tells that story, but gets hampered by tonal inconsistency, whereas QoS was allowed to be what it needed to be to explore the narrative it set out to. It begins laconic and moody, and ends as such, with the tiniest bit of reverberation as we sense the weight of Vesper's act lifted off Bond. He's found his quantum of solace. In LTK, the ending feels like a cheat in that regard, with a staged bit of celebration playing out when a quiet moment was a necessity.
The suits, settings and photography look very glamorous to me. Especially after the 'comic book sheen' of DAD.
That was so unsatisfying though. Sanchez barely has time to read let alone take in what the lighters engraving says before he's incinerated.
And two guys fighting on the back of a tanker just didn't seem personal enough to me.
After all the bloodshed that has occurred throughout the film it's an unsatisfying climax.
Agreed @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7
This is where the film wants to have its cake and eat it.
The ending you suggest would have been much more appropriate than the silly happy ending we get. The ending grates after all the grim bloodshed that has gone before. After all, Bond has resigned from the service and gone rogue, getting innocent people killed along the way, as well as blundering into a Hong Kong narcotics sting. And we're expected to swallow a 007 getting the girl, Leiters actually not dead and quite alright really and a winking fish ending.
It just doesn't work.
Thankfully the lesson was learnt with the excellent QoS.
Also, Q seems to get away scott-free with supplying a rogue agent with classified equipment.
That entire last scene is all very cheesy. The one bit I do like though is old Desmond looking down at Bond in the pool disapprovingly before swigging his drink and heading back to the party.
It's the woman he was going to spend his life with though, and it's like nothing happened. There's being callous, and then there's just being a sociopath; people should've honestly checked if he fell, hit his head and lost his memory because you'd think he'd forgot Della existed. Felix never acts like that, ever. He's always the lovable conniving ally to all of Bond's mischief, and cares for people in an endearing way that means he'll do anything for them. His reaction stands out as so fake and against character because Della was one of those people to him. Bond cares more about what happened, and he's just a friend to her.
Formula has strengths and weaknesses, and LTK shows the big drawback that comes from going too much on formula. It was able to skirt it at times throughout the movie, but when it really needed to pull back and deliver a different ending that dared not to be the same old "Oh, there's our James!" kind of ending where everyone's all together and happy and life is grand...well, it just doesn't work. Again, a bit too much like a Connery or Moore ending instead of what it needed to be, the biggest issue of the entire Dalton era: two tones fighting endlessly against each other. The unfortunate result is inconsistency in much of what we see.
As it's been pointed out, the film's content leading up to the denouement-despite some lighter moments here and there-spoke of a far more thoughtful and resonant ending. And we didn't get a tenth of that. If it was brave enough to do that, LTK would go from a 13 to 10 spot for me and get closer to the Craig and Connery movies.
Not to mention that Bond gets his job back without so much as a slap on the wrist, which has always been my least favorite part about the ending. I guess it didn't really matter if he had resigned or not since there were no consequences for him. It really undermines the drama at Hemingway's House from earlier in the film. Sucks to be that Agent Fallon who was sent to retrieve him!
I'd like to have seen how Dalton's third film would have dealt with the events of LTK, or whether they would have (probably) just been ignored.
Alas, it wasn't to be.
Judging from the plot that has been revealed for his third film, it was back to business as usual. The LTK novelization by Gardner actually did a better job of showing that M was looking out for Bond, but in the film there's not as much a sense of that. The Hemingway house incident happens, and then they just don't speak. Like the ending with Felix, there's no proper resolution to that very big moment that'd never happened in the series before. When Bond resigns, it should be a big deal, but Bond and M never touch base and that's that.
I read the John Gardner novelization way back in 89 (and still have it)
I can remember actually preferring it to the film.
I love LTK. But I have to agree with this post....the film shifts between 6th and 8th spot in my rankings.
Not sure, @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7, it was a long time ago that I read it.
I'll have to dig it out and have another read of it!
Was that so hard? Or are you being "ironic" now?