The 15th James Bond film and the first of the two starring Timothy Dalton as the suave British agent. 007 goes to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia to help a defector get to the West. The mission is successful. Then the defector is kidnapped...This is one of the most complex of the Bond films with a few good twists along the way, and a lot of great action scenes, as well as being one of the ones that feels somewhat like an actual spy movie, if still clearly a Bond film. It's also the last for the time being to have featured a (lead) blonde Bond Girl (or if you're feeling punny, a Blonde Girl).
This film contains examples of:
Adaptation Expansion: The original short story is only about the sniper mission at the beginning of the movie.
The story features Bond having to help a British agent escape East Berlin, by eliminating the opposing sniper. When he recognises her as a beautiful woman he saw earlier, he merely elects to wound her and prevent her killing the agent. M is not happy, as Bond's delay caused by adjusting his aim nearly causes the mission to fail.
Badass Bystander: The security guard/butler who enters the kitchen after Necros killed the Chef qualifies. Not only does he manage to fight Necros for several minutes in a hand to hand fight (remember that's the guy who is supposed to give Bond trouble), he also most likely survived having been only knocked out with a frying pan.
Kamran Shah appears to be one of these as well during his first appearance, but he turns out to be quite important indeed.
Deadly Delivery: The Dragon disguises himself as a milkman and a balloon salesman. Both times he kills his targets by strangling them with the cords of his headphones.
Distracted by the Sexy: Bond dispatches Pushkin's bodyguard by using Pushkin's topless mistress as a distraction.
Just a Stupid Accent: Necros uses this trope to advantage, switching effortlessly when posing as an American jogger, a British delivery driver and a (public school accent) guard, then a Lzherusskie accent when doing the actual kidnapping so people will think the KGB is involved.
Jereon Krabbe often didn't even bother with the accent, making his request for a "detachment of men and some trucks" in Afghanistan sound rather hilarious compared to his usual voice.
Kidnapped By An Ally: Bond gets taken away at gunpoint not for nefarious purposes, but so that his old friend Felix Leiter can ask what's up.
Meaningful Name: Necros' name is from the Greek prefix meaning death.
Miles Gloriosus: Koskov implies Whitaker is one of these. Pushkin does more than imply, he goes into extremely unimpressed detail about the multiple ways that Whitaker fails to live up to the image he tries to present.
Musical Trigger: The stun-gas keyring is set off by whistling.
Mythology Gag: The two other Double-0 agents in the opening teaser resemble Roger Moore and George Lazenby.
Never Trust A Poster: The blonde girl on the original movie poster (not the trope picture above) is neither Maryam D'abo, nor is she supposed to represent her character from the film (according to the producers). It's all just a big coincidence.
Oh Crap: Koskov's reaction to Pushkin's "diplomatic bag" line.
Paintball Episode: In the opening Double O Agents try to parachute and inflitrate the British radar station at Gibraltar as part of a wargame exercise. SAS troops try to stop them by shooting them with paintballs.
Bond: Stuff my orders, I only kill professionals. That girl didn't know one end of a rifle from the other.
And if Bond had killed Kara, she wouldn't have needed to dump the gun, Bond wouldn't have found the blanks, the British (including Bond) would have thought Koskov's defection was real, Bond would have killed Pushkin, and the bad guys would have won. (That, or it would have been a very short movie.)
Senseless Violins: Kara Milovy conceals a sniper rifle in her cello case.
Show Some Leg: Subverted in that instead of the usual slim gorgeous Bond Girl, an overweight a husky Slav woman provides the distraction so Koskov can defect.
Whittaker is a better example, priding himself as a military genius, even though he's a disgraced student of West Point.
Sniper Duel: The film opens with one, but Bond quickly realises that the girl on the other side isn't a sniper at all - barely knowing one end of a rifle from the other - and refuses to kill her. He instead shoots the rifle out of her hands.
Spanner in the Works: Bizarrely, had General Koskov not tried to have his girlfriend Kara murdered, then the whole plan would have gone off without a hitch. The worst part is there was no honest to God reason why he couldn't just ditch her when he defected to the West.
He did try to get her killed by having her be the fake sniper. Had Bond not decide to break his orders, she'd have had her head ventilated.
Remember she knew of Koskov's plan to defect, which would have interfered with Koskov's plan to return saying he'd been on a secret mission for Pushkin. If she'd revealed that under interrogation before Pushkin had been assassinated...
Spiked Wheels: A high-tech version using Frickin' Laser Beams. If that wasn't enough, the tyres also have retractable spikes for grip on snow and ice.
Whole Plot Reference: To The Third Man (you know, an Anglo-Saxon macho falls in love with a Bohemian performer and escapee who is trailed by the KGB and both then roam Vienna and especially the Great Ferris Wheel on the Wurstelprater, and the supposed best friend and most trusted ally turns out to be anything butunavailable. Oh yeah, and he coldly betrayed his girlfriend - the same one who ended up with the protagonist - by delivering her to the soviets because she knew too much) Right down to 'Balloon, Mein Heir'.
Not a coincidence - director John Glen's first job on a film was on The Third Man, and he explicitly mentions adding various style and plot references in the DVD commentary.
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