Coming in with probably a very hot take and my thoughts on
License to Kill (1989) - the final outing of Timothy Dalton and what I would consider the last Bond movie of the 'classic' era, as the 6 year gap to GoldenEye and the re-casting of Bond always made me look at those movies forward as more of a 'modern Bond', and before that they seemed to crank these movies out every 2 years or so.
So I really liked this movie. Spoilers. I've looked around and this seems to be a fairly controversial one because people either have it in their top10 or it's fairly low and very rarely do I see it in people's top 5 or so. It doesn't really feel like the other Bond movies that came before it and I think that could be viewed as a positive and a negative, there's not as much humor and the story is fairly dark, the portrayal of Bond is very detached from Roger Moore doing silly faces and Tarzan yells just a couple of years prior. I think back to when Daniel Craig took over and there was a lot of praise for the more dark/serious take on Bond and I kinda feel like this movie had already done that. No disrespect to Craig, but License to Kill in my opinion does a lot of the great things that the Craig movies did, except 15-20 years earlier.
But if we start at the beginning, I really like the opening where they catch our main bad guy Sanchez by hooking his plane to their helicopter in a scene that reminded me a bit of the opening to Dark Knight Rises. I like the set up of Felix getting married and I like what happens to him and his wife that sets the story up for Bond to go rogue. The movie feels very 80s and I could see this going down as a strong negative for people but as a big fan of 80s action, it felt a bit refreshing that this movie changed the mood a bit. There's even a scene later when Q shows up to introduce new classical silly gadgets to Bond and I love the way Timothy Dalton responds to it almost in a "We don't have time for this" way by telling them they should all get some sleep instead.
I liked the Bond-girl in The Living Daylights and how her innocence felt like a nice compliment to Dalton's portrayal of Bond but for other reasons I really liked Carey Lowell as Pam in this one. She felt like a very capable Bond girl who brought something other than looking pretty, and there's a great first proper meeting between her and Bond at a small bar where she asks him if he is packing - and a funny payoff with him showing his tiny gun and her showing a shotgun. That whole part is great, they escape, she gets shot but it becomes clear that she can carry her own weight and becomes a good sidekick to him.
I like Bond infiltrating the Sanchez organization because for a movie franchise about a secret spy, it feels like infiltrating hasn't always been a big plot point in many of the films. I also really like the bad guys - the main guy Sanchez (Robert Davi) might feel like your typical drug baron, and a young Benicio Del Toro is to some extent the typical 'loose cannon' hotshot henchman who will kinda do crazy things. But they feel like realistic real villains in a more real world and the whole drug plot (while very 80's) feels refreshing after so many movies where a guy wants to rule the world. And finally I need to talk about the tanker chase sequence at the end because that is quite possibly the strongest action set piece so far of the franchise (17 movies in) and parts of it almost felt like a homage to Mad Max. For a movie I had highly enjoyed up to that point, this whole ending was the cherry on top like they say. Just a wonderful thrilling action scene.
License to Kill was a blast to me, but I can see why some people might not like it. It doesn't really have that Bond-feel to it, and you do get less jokes than most of the other ones. I gotta give some props to director John Glen though because while he made some of the weakest entries to the franchise IMO (Octopussy and A View to a Kill), I think that the two Dalton movies more than make up for that. My final controversial take will be that I'm placing this as my nr1 for now - but I have a strong hunch that it will be dethroned because there are 2 more Bond movies to go that I have seen more times that I know are very high for me.
License to Kill (TD)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (GL)
From Russia With Love (SC)
The Living Daylights (TD)
The Spy Who Loved Me (RM)
You Only Live Twice (SC)
Live and Let Die (RM)
Goldfinger (SC)
For Your Eyes Only (RM)
The Man With the Golden Gun (RM)
Thunderball (SC)
Moonraker (RM)
Octopussy (RM)
Dr. No (SC)
A View to a Kill (RM)
Diamonds Are Forever (SC)
Never Say Never Again (SC)