The one with Bond sledding down a mountain on a cello.The Living Daylights is the 15th James Bond film and the first of the two starring Timothy Dalton as the suave British agent. After a training exercise Bond and the other 00-Agents are involved in on Gibraltar turns deadly for 004 and a few SAS guards the agents were sparring against, Bond is given his next mission: assist in the defection of a highly ranked Soviet general named Georgi Koskov when he visits the Conservatoire in Bratislava, Czechoslavakia. The defection works out, but Bond suspects something's amiss when the sniper sent to kill the defector was the pretty cellist performing at the Conservatoire, who was clearly not a professional with a sniper rifle. Against orders, Bond merely wounds the woman, before helping Koskov get over the border to Austria via one of Q's contraptions.Back in London, Koskov reveals that the new head of the KGB, General Pushkin, is starting up a new operation called Smiert Spionom, Russian for "Death to Spies." Koskov fears that retaliation from the British or Americans will lead to nuclear war. However, before further details can be gleaned from him, Koskov is snatched from the safehouse he was being kept in, assumedly by the KGB. Bond thinks there's more to the story than meets the eye, but M is convinced enough to order that Pushkin be killed while at a trade convention in Tangiers, especially when 004's body is returned from Gibraltar with a found note reading Smiert Spionom. Bond accepts the assasination order reluctantly, but decides that there's enough time to investigate things in Bratislava, starting with that pretty cellist...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). Also noteworthy in that this is the last Bond film in which the Soviet Union is a major player.note
The last Bond film before the dissolution of the Soviet Union was Licence To Kill, but it takes place in the Americas, and the USSR is not involved.
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.
Androcles Lion: When Bond and Kara are thrown in a prison in Afghanistan, they quickly beat up their guards and escape. On a whim, they free the prisoner in the next cell, who quickly proves to be a valuable ally as he's a leader of the Afghan Resistance.
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.
Blasting It Out Of Their Hands: In the original short story too. Notably, Kara does not escape uninjured, and Bond eventually uses his knowledge of how her arm was hurt to convince her to trust him over Koskov.
Blood Knight: Brad Whitaker is a war fanatic, despite the fact he's called on being grossly incompetent at it by everyone he meets.
Covers Always Lie: One of the film's posters shows the gunbarrel with Timothy Dalton aiming at Maryam D'Abo, who carries a silenced gun. No such scene appears in the film.
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.
Evil Plan: It's a Bond film; of course the Big Bad has one. It involves the defector.
Faking the Dead: Bond helps Pushkin to fake his death at the former's hands to find out what Koskov and Whitaker are up to. This may have inadvertently saved Pushkin's life as Necros was in the rafters ready to kill him as well.
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.
Necros's default accent appears to be this. Although he adopts it when taking Koskov from the safehouse to make it appear like the KGB was responsible, he also talks that way when conferring with Koskov and Whitaker later, when he would have no need to pretend to be someone else.
Just Plane Wrong: The American C-130 being used as a Soviet transport. At first, one could be forgiven for thinking its one of Whitaker's planes...until you see shots of the control panel and notice the wording is in Cyrillic...
And it appears the labels have been taped on.
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.
Kitchen Chase: One scene involves a full-on fight between a British intelligence mook and a KGB hitman in the kitchen of an MI 6 safehouse.
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.
Mood Whiplash: Versus Roger Moore's previous take. Also within the movie, since it was originally written for Moore. A lot of the Moore-era puns and silliness are there, but Dalton's presence generally gives the film a much darker atmosphere.
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.
The Other Darrin: Timothy Dalton as James Bond and Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny.
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: Played with 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.
Waking Up Elsewhere: Bond is drugged in Tangier and wakes up on a plane bound for Afghanistan.
War for Fun and Profit: Koskov and Whittaker are trading diamonds to the Afghans for opium. The Afghans use the diamonds to buy weapons, and then Whittaker sells the opium and uses some of the profits to buy guns that Koskov purchases for the Russian Army. Since the diamonds were purchased using the down payment Koskov paid for the guns the Russians are getting, they're essentially trying to arm both sides on the USSR's dime and profit immensely from it.
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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