This was to be Dalton's second and last appearance as Bond and, in fact, the franchise
disappeared for six whole years until 1995 when Pierce Brosnan shone brightly in
my favourite Bond film to date, Goldeneye.
There's more print flecks and scratches than I expected there to be for a comparatively
recent film, but it's still certainly watchable. It is presented in the original 2.35:1
anamorphic widescreen ratio.
The average bitrate is a middle-of-the-road 5.2Mb/s, briefly peaking over 8Mb/s.
The sound FX are as good as they should be, albeit sounding a little false and overdone
on occasions. However, as long as it's loud and proud it's good enough.
Extras :
Chapters :
The usual 32 chapters for an MGM, which is an excellent amount. If only some other DVD
companies could take a lesson from this one.
Languages & Subtitles :
English is the only language on the disc - in Dolby Digital 5.1 - and there are subtitles
in 12 languages: English (and hard of hearing), Dutch, Swedish, Finnish,
Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Hebrew and Turkish.
And there's more... :
There's not as many extras this time round as with some of the earlier
discs in the series.
Featurette: Inside Licence To Kill (31 mins): Another
entertaining documentary narrated by Patrick Macnee with chat from all the
same people and it appears to have been shot at the same time as the one for
The Living Daylights.
Production Featurette (5 mins): One of those cheest made-for-TV featurettes
with token film clips and crew chat, all narrated by Don La Fontaine, the man who
does all the movie adverts voices.
Featurette: Kenworth Truck Stunt (9 mins): A look at Bond's stunt-riding
of a huge truck as a bad-guy fires a rocket launcher Dalton's way.
Two Music Videos (8 mins): First up is one of my favourite Bond themes
because of its distinctive epic sound and I was reminded of it when James H. Reeve
used it as the theme for his brief stint on Century FM radio last year when standing in for
the now-departed Scottie McClue, Gladys Knight's tune with the same title as the film,
plus Patti LaBelle's If You Asked Me To, which was later ripped apart in 1992
by Celine Dion who took it to the dizzy heights of No.57.
Two Trailers (3 mins): Both are in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, the
latter going into a little more depth about the storyline.
Two Audio Commentaries: One from director John Glen and actors,
plus a second from producer/screenwriter Michael G. Wilson and crew.
Gallery: Plenty of pics, some taken from location shoots and others set out as
portrait shots.
Some of the content, particularly the TV spots, isn't exactly first-rate
in terms of picture quality and sound, but it adds to the nostalgic quality
and all the interviews are clear enough.
The animated and scored main menu, plus similar treatment given to the swipes
between menus, is as rich and colourful as we've come to expect from this
series.
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL
The following is a list of all the Bond films now available in production order
with their dates of release, followed by the unofficial movies:
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
