Headscratchers / Licence to Kill

• It's interesting that this movie was written and directed by the same people who made For Your Eyes Only, in which Bond talked Melina out of seeking revenge for her parents' murders. The man who said "Before setting off on revenge, you first dig two graves" not only has a very short memory, but he also notably suffers no consequences whatsoever for ignoring his own advice. Nobody even seems to care that he accidentally exposed a long-running UK/Hong Kong sting operation and got that entire team killed.
  • It must be remembered that Bond is already a professional killer at that point, and Melina isn't. Bond is comfortable, or at least resigned, to his life of violence, is hardened enough to allow his violent impulses and desires for revenge to be given free reign, and is competent enough to do so with a degree of efficiency and remove. But he is also self-aware enough to realise what a toll this can take on a person, and is compassionate enough to other human beings — especially "civilians" living largely outside the life of a spy-assassin — to try and steer them away from the life he has found himself in if it is within his power to do so. That Bond is capable enough of realising he's going too far and steering his desire for revenge into a more constructive goal doesn't mean that Melina would be. He's already been 'destroyed' by that point, he doesn't want her to destroy herself.
  • As for "no consequences", not only does he clearly realise that his single-minded quest for revenge is having harmful repercussions and experiences a My God, What Have I Done? moment, but the reason he "suffers no consequences" is because it ends with him almost single-handedly dismantling the operation and killing the target that was the whole purpose of the sting operation to begin with. He gets off relatively easy because he realises he fucked up and made efforts to correct his mistakes that had particularly impressive results.

• Killifer helps Sanchez escape AND gives him a lot of information about Felix Leiter, but doesn't even mention Bond (who later shows up at Sanchez's door without bothering to use an alias). You'd think that for $2 million, Ed would have shared some information with Sanchez about the guy who literally caught him, even if all he could tell him was "it was some British agent named James Bond who actually dangled himself from a helicopter to snag your plane; Leiter was just sort of there for the ride."
  • Because Sanchez isn't interested in Bond at that point; he presumably just assumes that he was one of the team led by Leiter (which he was, technically). It's the fact that he got arrested that matters to Sanchez, not the guy who actually performed the cool stunt in arresting him. Furthermore, Killifer — being that kind of sleazeball — is presumably not going to just offer up that kind of information out of nowhere when there's a possibility it might be valuable later. Presumably if-and-when Bond started fucking around with Sanchez's operation he might have turned to Killifer again for information on who it could be, but unfortunately for him Killifer didn't live long enough to find out.
  • Killifer might genuinely not know the details of how Sanchez was caught, only that he "was" caught. Bond might even have asked Felix to keep his name out of it, since he's supposed to be a secret agent, and all Killifer might know of Bond is that he's one of Felix's friends.

• Sharkey. There was nothing particularly bad about him. He just seems to be thrown in there, like someone Bond & Felix had known for years. Since they had already brought back the same actor who had played Leiter in Live and Let Die, why not just make the character Quarrel, Jr. instead?
  • I think killing off two Quarrels in the series might have been a bit much...
    • Who says Sharkey isn't Quarrel Jr.? He could have gotten the nickname some time ago.
  • Probably due to the fact that the Florida location would require someone who knew those waters instead of the waters near Jamaica.

• How come Dario didn't recognize Bond when he came down to Central America? How come Sanchez was willing to trust Bond so much more than Dario when Dario had been loyal to him for years?
  • Dario isn't around for most of the Central America section- he's off doing evil business elsewhere. He only shows up again at the drug factory near the end of the movie, and he exposes Bond within minutes.

• The ending. Felix should've died instead of chatting with Bond as if he was as good as new.
  • Exactly. He lost a leg and his wife had just been raped and murdered, yet he was as cheerful as ever.
  • I always assumed the nurse gave him way too much morphine that day.
    • It's called "putting on a brave face".
    • Or "revenge is sweet".
    • Pretty much. Everyone responsible for his wife's rape and murder is dead. Most of them in an inventively gruesome way (eaten alive, exploded, shredded, burned alive, etc.) That would have to cheer him up a little bit.
  • In addition to the above points, from what we see he's not exactly singing-and-dancing-with-cartoon-bluebirds happy or anything. We see a couple of seconds of him lying in a hospital bed pleasantly talking to an old friend who's presumably been making an effort to keep things light (and, as mentioned above, has presumably learned by that point that everyone involved in the death of his wife has now died horribly), it's not like he's the life and soul of the party or anything.
    • Morphine is wonderful stuff!

• Okay, someone needs to change the name of the page. It's "License to Kill"
  • No, it's "Licence to Kill" — two C's, no S's. That's how the movie's own titles spell it. It's also the correct spelling in Commonwealth English.
  • There was some talk that they changed its original title "Licence Revoked" because too many people didn't know what "revoked" meant. This troper hopes that's not true.
    • There is also an early Denzel Washington film called License to Kill (note the spelling).

• Bond and Dario are having a drag-out fight over the machine where part of the process to refine the cocaine takes place. Earlier in the film when touring that same facility, Sanchez has the entire group wear surgical masks to protect themselves from inhaling any of the dust that may be suspended in the air. Now Bond and Dario are literally fighting in a cloud of cocaine on the grinder without any sort of respirators. How the hell aren't they high as a kite during that scene? For that matter, how have they not flat-outed overdosed?
  • It's probably a precaution against long-term exposure, and Sanchez could've done that in order to put his potential investors at ease. Alternatively, where do you think Bond's Heroic Willpower during the tanker chase comes from?
    • Cocaine is vitamins for James Bond?
    • Why not? It worked for Sherlock Holmes.
    • Plus Cocaine is a stimulant, what better drug to intake when you're in a fight for your life.

• Why didn't Killifer shoot Bond when he had the chance? I realize there would be no longer a movie, but Bond would never voluntarily lower himself into a shark tank and would clearly try to do a little misdirection and overtake his subduer. Even if Bond didn't plan on trying to overtake Bond, he would likely rather escape and die by a bullet than be mauled by a shark. Better to shoot him in the leg a couple of times and then kick him over into the shark pit.
  • I could think of some long explanation for this, but basically — it's a Bond movie. The bad guy's never just going to shoot James Bond in the head and call it a day (and even if he does, Bond will improbably survive somehow). It's Plot Armor; either accept it and move on, or don't.
  • He was planning to shoot Bond and let the corpse fall into the shark pool. Sharkey turned up at just the right moment.

• Could Killifer have reasonably been on Sanchez's payroll from day one? I believe it's a bit of a stretch, given the way Krest reacts when Sanchez is giving him the briefcase with the money.
  • I think he made the decision during the interrogation.
    • That was confirmed by the director. Killfer wasn't on his payroll - the interrogation is an example of One Dialogue, Two Conversations when Killifer says that one of Sanchez's famous million-dollar bribes won't get him out of this. Leiter thinks Killifer is taunting Sanchez. Sanchez understands that Killifer is saying he's open to a bribe but one million isn't enough - so Sanchez offers two million (and it's accepted).

• I don't really see a Spotting the Thread trope in Krest's Ocean Exotica facility with a man not knowing the Latin name for a great white shark. Bond is talking to a guard. And from what I know, guards are not obliged to be experts in the fields of facilities they are working in. Their work is to make sure nobody breaks in and steals or damages anything, to patrol around the place, and occasionally fall into electric eel aquariums when the situation necessitates. Like a janitor in a museum would also possibly not know what Van Gogh painted. They might be interested in the respected fields, but nobody will fire them if they don't know the answer, as their job requires completely different tasks.
  • It's not that he was suspicious of the guy. It's that he saw I think it was a petal or part of one of the flowers from either Della's or Felix's clothes. They had been trying all the aquariums in the area.
  • It wasn't that specific thing, it was first the guard, and then Krest's entire attitude. In a word, Krest and the guard are acting highly suspicious (and honestly Bond was ready to grasp at straws at that point). Bond didn't just start shooting people, he came back at night to investigate and then found the cocaine to confirm his suspicions.
  • This isn't wholly unreasonable; low-level employees of specialised institutes might not be expected to be experts in the field, but they usually aren't stupid or completely ignorant either. They often can't be — such institutes aren't just giant warehouses where you can walk around with a torch or a broom and that's all that's needed, they frequently have very specialised practices and processes that they would need to be at least aware of to do their jobs. Therefore, unless they were literally braindead idiots they would be expected to pick up some stray knowledge through osmosis if nothing else. Sure, our hypothetical janitor might not necessarily gain enough knowledge about art to become an expert art critic, but if they were responsible for cleaning the rooms where the art was displayed they'd be exposed to it so often that at least some stray facts would eventually sink in whether they had an interest in the subject or not, so it would be kind of suspicious if they didn't know anything. The janitor might not become an expert on Van Gogh's biography, but they would almost certainly know of the existence of a painter called Van Gogh and at least some of his paintings, so if you mentioned Van Gogh to such a janitor and they went "Who?", you'd likely make a note of that as unusual if not suspicious. Similarly, the Latin name for a great white shark is the kind of term that would be frequently used at a business supposedly focused on studying and dealing with exotic ocean life and sharks specifically; it's a common enough animal that the guard would almost certainly have encountered at some point, the guard would hear it discussed by the actual experts, would see it written down on labels and on the tanks and on paperwork, he would probably need to know it in case any shipments came in under the Latin name and not the everyday name, and so forth. The guard might not become an expert on, say, the shark's eating or mating habits or anything, but its name is a fact that he would be likely if not expected to have learned at some point. So the fact that the guard shows no understanding of it at all heavily suggests that the actual main business being conducted there does not revolve around sharks or any other marine life (if he doesn't know the shark, there's almost certainly no more obscure animals involved there), and any sharks there are simply for cover. It may not be enough to get a search warrant or anything, but it is enough to plausibly make Bond suspicious about the true activities of Ocean Exotica.

• How did the scuba divers know that Bond was a bad guy when he shot that one guy who was after Sharkey and escaped by diving underwater? There weren't any distinguishing features on his suit to show he was different than anyone else and I don't remember radio technology existing in those days for Krest to communicate to his men to kill Bond.
  • They already know someones on board that shouldn't be, plus they were already shooting at Bond so the divers would of seen what happend and figured they had to kill him.
• When Bond was on the conveyor belt, his hands were tied behind his back. Wouldn't it be impossible to have any mobility at all from which to free himself? Joints don't work that way.
  • it only looked that way from the way the mook was holding him but in the last shot you can see that Bonds hands are tied up front.
• What is the purpose of the camera gun? Supposedly, it is a gun disguised as a camera to get past security, but first, you'd have to assemble it into a functioning weapon using obvious gun parts, like the barrel and a sniper scope. If you could get those past the security, why not the rest of the gun too, and if you couldn't then of what use is the camera part?
  • In the movie Q has the camera gun already wrapped up in a present Bond would only look like someone going to a party and he would just have to say that. the cops or any authority wouldn't have a reason to look in the present because they have no reason to suspect him yet. If a situation arose where he had to sneak the camera in presumably the scope and barrel could be disguised more. the barrel hidden in a tripod for instance.

• Late in the film we find that Sanchez sells product by the ton. Yet, Krest runs this incredibly elaborate operation for what looks like less than a hundred pounds of cocaine.