For other uses, see Licence to Kill (disambiguation).
Licence to Kill
Theatrical release poster by Robin Behling
Directed by
John Glen
Written by
Michael G. Wilson
Richard Maibaum
Based on
James Bond by Ian Fleming
Produced by
Albert R. Broccoli
Michael G. Wilson
Starring
Timothy Dalton
Carey Lowell
Robert Davi
Talisa Soto
Anthony Zerbe
Cinematography
Alec Mills
Edited by
John Grover
Music by
Michael Kamen
Production companies
Eon Productions United Artists
Distributed by
MGM/UA Communications Co. (United States) United International Pictures (International)
Release dates
13 June 1989 (1989-06-13) (London)
10 July 1989 (1989-07-10) (United Kingdom)
14 July 1989 (1989-07-14) (United States)
Running time
133 minutes
Countries
United Kingdom[1] United States[2]
Language
English
Budget
$32 million
Box office
$156.1 million
Licence to Kill is a 1989 action-thriller film, the sixteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the second and final film to star Timothy Dalton as the MI6 agent James Bond. It sees Bond resigning from MI6 as he pursues the drug lord Franz Sanchez, who has ordered an attack against Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter and the murder of Felix's wife after their wedding.
Licence to Kill was the fifth and final Bond film directed by John Glen, the last to feature Robert Brown as M and Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny. It was also the last to feature the work of the screenwriter Richard Maibaum, the title designer Maurice Binder and the producer Albert R. Broccoli, all of whom died in the following years.
Licence to Kill was the first Bond film to not use the title of an Ian Fleming story. Originally titled Licence Revoked, the name was changed during post-production due to American test audiences associating the term with driver's licence. Although its plot is largely original, it contains elements of the Fleming novel Live and Let Die and the short story "The Hildebrand Rarity", interwoven with a sabotage premise influenced by Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo.
For budget reasons, Licence to Kill became the first Bond film shot entirely outside the United Kingdom: principal photography took place on location in Mexico and the US, while interiors were filmed at Estudios Churubusco instead of Pinewood Studios. The film earned over $156 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews, with praise for the stunts, but attracted criticism for its darker tone, which carried into Dalton's portrayal of Bond.
^"Licence to Kill". Lumiere. European Audiovisual Observatory. Archived from the original on 12 October 2020. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
^"AFI|Catalog". Archived from the original on 23 May 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
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actor to portray fictional secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, starring in The Living Daylights (1987) and LicencetoKill (1989)...
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(pronounced "Double O") is a field agent who holds a licencetokill in the field, at their discretion, to complete any mission. The novel Moonraker establishes...
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