23 MAY 2023
JBC rating: ****
James Bond Connections (2):
- Featuring Timothy Dalton (James Bond, 1987 – 1989) as Foreign Office official Charles Lord.
- Director of Photography Freddie Young (DOP, You Only Live Twice).
A decade before his casting as 007, rising Welsh leading man Timothy Dalton appeared in Permission to Kill, an ensemble spy drama with some similarities to Munich (2006), another espionage thriller featuring a future Bond (Daniel Craig). Opposite in tone to the comedic and increasingly fantastical Bond films of the 1970s, this dark and gritty spy movie contains themes reflecting a morally uncertain world dominated by increasing cynicism about Western governments following Vietnam and the leaked Pentagon Papers. The presence of Dalton, playing a British Foreign Office official with the same depth, coolness and world-weary nature he would later bring to 007, anticipates the more grounded films of the 1980s. The film also points toward the moral complexities of the Daniel Craig era.
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