The last straw is when M flatly tells him to let the Americans clean up their own mess. There, he meets M who orders him to his next assignment in Istanbul. Bond, so consumed by vengeance, defiantly refuses. Bond is taken to American agents to Hemingway House in Key West. The movie’s turning point follows soon thereafter. While at the center, Bond discovers Killifer and feeds him to that same hungry tiger shark. The facility is a front allowing Krest to use his boat to smuggle Sanchez’s drugs in and out of the country. First though, with the help of Leiter’s friend, charter-boat owner Sharkey (Frank McRae), Bond starts his own investigation, which leads him to an aquarium-marine research center run by Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe), an accomplice of Sanchez.

The look on Dalton’s face - a mixture of grief, outrage and fury - when he discovers the couple is one of the most unforgettable and poignant moments in the Bond franchise.īond’s only thought is to go after Sanchez and kill him.

Bond, upon hearing of Sanchez’s escape, is the one who finds Della as well as the badly maimed Leiter. For good measure, he and his men - including a young Benicio del Toro as the psychotic henchman, Dario - murder and presumably rape Leiter’s bride, Della, whom he had married earlier that day. Sanchez escapes after bribing DEA agent Ed Killifer (Everett McGill) and, before leaving the country, kidnaps Leiter and lowers him into a tank containing a tiger shark. He’s captured by DEA agents with the help of Bond and his longtime CIA friend, Felix Leiter, as Sanchez attempts to flee the United States and return to Isthmus. Sanchez is a Latin American drug lord who basically runs the island Republic of Isthmus (think Panama and its former military leader, Manuel Noriega) and who has worldwide distribution aspirations for his product. Bond’s wrath is aimed at Franz Sanchez, portrayed by a ruthless and cold-blooded Robert Davi. Timothy Dalton, in his second and unfortunately final performance as Bond, brings a fierceness fueled by revenge to his portrayal that had not been seen since the early days of Sean Connery. Licence to Kill is an ironic title for the 16th James Bond outing since, at the beginning of the movie, Bond is stripped of his 007 status and said license (sorry, American spelling in the body copy, folks) to kill is revoked.

Bond license to kill