For the James Bond Nightmare Fuel index, see here.
Licence to Kill is certainly the bloodiest and goriest James Bond film ever made. In fact, when it was originally submitted to the MPAA, it was given a Restricted Rating and had to be toned down to get a PG-13 note . Here's why.
- Milton Krest's death by Explosive Decompression. YEEEESH.
- The lead-up to said death, which has no Background Music but does have the sound of the depth gauge machine reaching a crescendo and then releasing air as it is punctured. Then Krest's head inflates...
- What makes it worse is Sanchez's expression: it's completely blank during the entire death scene, and he actually takes the time to let Krest know he's screwed by showing him the axe he uses to destroy the pipe for a few seconds.
- Also of note: as gruesome as the scene is, it was actually toned down from the original concept where the figure of Krest in the window had an even more strong resemblance to Anthony Zerbe. It ended up this way due to producers wanting to avoid censorship. Think about that for a moment.
- A subtle moment occurs shortly before this. When Sanchez arrives at the WaveKrest, he questions Krest himself while sending Perez and Braun to look around the ship. When they find the money, Perez goes to Sanchez and whispers the news into his ear, and while Sanchez keeps his cool demeanor, his eyes go wide with murderous rage.
- Dario's run in with a cocaine grinder. You don't see him directly being shredded, but bloody bits coming out the other side of the grinder, blood-dyed cocaine dust and a vivid imagination can fill in the details, not to mention Dario's screams of pure agony and terror. He very much deserved it for raping and killing Felix Leiter's wife, that being said.
- The music accompanying this scene sounds like it came from a horror movie
. - When Sanchez first tries to send Bond down the grinder:
- The music accompanying this scene sounds like it came from a horror movie
- Sanchez feeding Leiter's legs to a shark and Dario informing him that he raped and killed Della ("We gave her a nice honeymoooon!"). Especially after Bond visits the now-empty house and sees everything destroyed and Della's dead body on the bed, eyes still open.
- That schmuck security guard at Krest's warehouse who Bond unceremoniously knocks out and locks in a container full of live maggots. In reality, maggots don't consume living matter, so the guy would probably be ok (if seriously freaked out), but later dialogue mentions "two corpses and a bit of what used to be Killifer" being found there, so presumably he wasn't that lucky.
- Heller meeting his dead end - impaled on a forklift.
- Sanchez's Establishing Character Moment at the beginning of the film: killing his mistress Lupe's lover (and cutting his heart out, to boot) and then whipping her with the tail of a stingray, made even worse by the downright ominous music, and his Faux Affably Evil tone. Not to mention the scream the guy makes as his heart is cut out (offscreen). By the way, Dario was the one who did that.
- And when Bond sees her scars later, it's clear from Lupe's response that Sanchez manipulates her into thinking it's her fault that he whipped her. Yeah.
- Sanchez himself is pretty terrifying, if it's when he's being Faux Affably Evil, or when he goes into a rage (which he does very often). But when he undergoes his Villainous Breakdown near the end of the film, it really peaks.
- The scariest thing about him is that there really were people like him at the time (Pablo Escobar, anyone?) Most Bond villains want global domination. But Sanchez - he's already achieved global domination in the drug lord business... and he didn't have a laser or a superweapon or anything.
- Bond's killing of Ed Killifer, the DEA agent who sold Leiter out, by tossing him into a shark pool where he's killed by the same shark that mauled Felix. The death isn't even the scary part - it's Bond's expression. No quip and raised eyebrow, just blankness, one of his most cold-blooded moments in the whole series and aided immensely by Timothy Dalton's absolutely chilling delivery. The posters said that his bad side is a dangerous place to be. They weren't kidding.
- When this Bond sneaks aboard the WaveKrest and threatens Lupe with a knife, you're genuinely scared for her. The unfortunate implications is that she's an abused wife to begin with.
- The manner in which Bond finally kills Sanchez, by setting his gasoline-soaked body alight with his lighter — the same one Felix and Della had given him as their wedding gift. Sanchez is then left to burn alive before stumbling into the leaking gasoline tanker. It is as brutal and terrifying as it is truly karmic.
- Krest's men are so nonchalant about killing Sharkey that the guy who catches him even laughs about it when he brings the body in, hung up like a fish.
- Della spent her last night alive being gang raped by Sanchez's men before being stabbed to death...On her WEDDING DAY.
- As if we already didn't know being on Bond's bad side on a mission was a dangerous place to be, this film, and, to his credit, Dalton's performance demonstrates how worse it would be to be on his bad side after royally pissing him off. It's something you never want to do, EVER.
- Further, the film shows us Bond pushed over the edge, to the point he's abandoned the service and is determined to take down the enemy on his own, even if it means committing cold-blooded murder, though, in Bond's defence, his targets are bad guys. But while being pushed over the edge would be a detriment to some, Bond going over just makes him MORE cunning, ruthless, and compassionless. All of the skills and training he's learned over the years are still in top form, and he remorselessly dispatches every bad guy who personally gets his way without a single flicker of remorse. His plan to turn Sanchez against his own people actually works well to a point, and it's just something Bond is doing on the fly. He becomes single-mindedly focused on one objective and will do whatever he needs to do to make that objective a reality. His only major mistakes involve his personal plan to take Sanchez down blowing up two alternative plans to go against Sanchez that he was unaware were running simultaneously. Bond is dangerous enough on a mission. When it's personal, Bond demonstrates he's as ruthless as they come, and he has the skills and training to back it up to the hilt. You definitely wouldn't want this Bond waiting for you in your home if you'd wronged him.
