Licence to Kill (1989) on Netflix
PG-1319892h 13mActionAdventureThriller
James Bond helps catch drug lord Franz Sanchez on the way to his friend Felix Leiter's wedding. When Sanchez escapes and turns on Leiter, Bond goes after him as a rogue agent.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.7/10121,793 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bond arrives in Key West for the wedding of his friend Felix Leiter, now a DEA agent. Before the ceremony, DEA colleagues enlist the two men to catch drug lord Franz Sanchez. Bond and Leiter hook Sanchez's plane from a Coast Guard helicopter, bring him in, then parachute to the church. Sanchez escapes while being moved, and his men ambush Leiter and his wife Della; Leiter is tortured at an aquarium belonging to Sanchez's associate Milton Krest, and Della is killed. Bond, joined by Leiter's friend Sharkey, begins his own inquiry into Krest's marine research center. Ordered to a new posting, Bond refuses, so M suspends him and revokes his license to kill.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Licence to Kill (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rising costs after Britain scrapped a tax break for foreign artists in 1985 forced Eon Productions to shoot Licence to Kill entirely in Mexico and the United States, making it the first James Bond film with no filming done in the United Kingdom; Pinewood Studios handled only post-production.
- The film was originally titled Licence Revoked, but MGM changed it during post-production and scrapped its already-commissioned teaser posters after American test audiences kept associating the phrase with the loss of a driving license.
- Composer John Barry was originally meant to score the film but had to drop out after suffering a rupture of the esophagus in 1988 that required throat surgery, and it was considered unsafe to fly him from New York to London to finish the work, so Michael Kamen took over instead.
SPOILER
For villain henchman Milton Krest's death in a decompression chamber, effects supervisor John Richardson's team built a prosthetic head molded from actor Anthony Zerbe's own face; the result looked so gruesome that the shot had to be shortened and toned down to avoid censorship problems.- Both the MPAA and Britain's BBFC objected to the film's violence, with the BBFC specifically demanding a 36-second cut before release; the movie only became available uncut for the first time with the 2006 Ultimate Edition DVD, and it remains the only Bond film originally rated 15 by the BBFC.
- While filming the parachuting sequence with Timothy Dalton, a malfunction in the harness equipment caused actor David Hedison, playing Felix Leiter, to fall onto the pavement, leaving him with an injury that made him limp for the rest of the shoot.
- Guitarist Vic Flick, who played the original 007 theme, and Eric Clapton were first asked to write and perform the title song to suit Timothy Dalton's grittier Bond, but producers rejected their version and chose Gladys Knight's song instead, which borrowed the horn line from 'Goldfinger' and required royalty payments to that song's writers.
- Despite grossing more than 4.3 times its budget, Licence to Kill has the lowest inflation-adjusted box-office return and the lowest profit margin of all 25 official Bond films as of 2022, and is the least financially successful Bond film in the US and Canada once inflation is factored in.
