Fletch (1985)

Director: Michael Ritchie

Cast: Chevy Chase, Joe Don Baker, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Tim Matheson

Have I Seen it Before: Most definitely. Here’s an odd moment of stupidity from my past: I’m at an opening night screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). When Frodo (Elijah Wood) identifies himself as Mr. Underhill, I am the only voice in the theater who barks out a beat of laughter. I did this because I was reminded of this film.

Did I Like It: If a movie star’s greatest film is ultimately that movie for which they were most present during their performance, I have a very dim view for any other film being Chase’s greatest. There are any number of films (and more than a few episodes of my beloved Community) where he is demonstrably asleep at the wheel, and I’m not even entirely sure any of the various Clark Griswold outings would count.

Clark Griswold is a put upon family man, Fletch (or at least, the Fletch presented in this film, as opposed to the Fletch of numerous Gregory McDonald) is a quip machine who is perpetually in matters just over his head. Now, which one of these men do you think is more firmly in Chase’s wheelhouse? I’ll wait for my answer.

This is not to say that the film is without—or even manages to avoid being riddled with—flaws. Is anyone buying the idea that Tim Matheson and Chevy Chase are the same build, and that that is enough to prop up the plot here? It was enough to work in the McDonald novel, but I would have liked to have seen a little more-than-perfunctory work on adapting the novel, so as to not let such a glaring plot hole run throughout the entire proceedings. Also, as much as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is (with his Sherlockian streak) a delightful and welcome presence in a comedy film, the basketball fantasy sequence could have been pulled right out, the film wouldn’t have suffered, and we would have been speared a fearful portent of the comedic dead weight Chase was doomed to become.

The Living Daylights (1987)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, Joe Don Baker, Jeroen Krabbé

Have I Seen it Before: I could keep going over the mid-90s heyday of the TNT Bond marathon and how it steeped me all things 007 during the height of the Pierce Brosnan era. Let’s just leave it at the fact that I’ve seen all of them.

Did I Like It: First of all, I like Timothy Dalton a lot. Screw you if you can’t deal with that.

This has almost nothing to do with the fact that he is in The Rocketeer (1991) and therefore deserves an appropriate level of adulation. Well, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with that. In truth, before Daniel Craig come on to the scene, Dalton was doing the brave and thankless work of picking up the pieces from the Roger Moore era and bringing the material back to its Ian Fleming core. Dalton even kind of looks like Hoagy Carmichael, long mentioned as the closest real-world equivalent for the look of the literary Bond.

This isn’t to say that Ian Fleming is a faultless paragon of literary virtue. Far from it, but when the film series was more interesting in adapting the Bond of the books, the films became much more interesting and far less fixated on reliving the format solidified by Goldfinger (1964).

The plot works, and even manages to keep me engaged through the long second act of Bond films, where you are most likely to find me slowly nodding off. The less said about the need of 1980s action cinema to turn the Mujahedeen into quirky allies the better, as that routine had a shelf life of about fifteen years before Bond would be sent to snuff out Kamran Shah (Art Malik) in my personal Timothy Dalton fan fiction*. 

The gadgets are great, aside from the racist-in-a-way-that-only-Ian-Fleming-would-like Ghetto Blaster. Sinful even more so because it has no role in the plot to follow, but the key chain and the Aston Martin V8 Vantage absolutely slaps. I will have words with anyone who says otherwise. A-ha’s title track is a toe-tapper, but the last time John Barry would hold a baton for a Bond film deserves much more of a moment in cinematic history than this film enjoys. The opening sequence that sees Bond the only survivor of a training exercise gone wrong is actually one of my favorite opening sequences, made only better by the fact that the rest of the film is imminently watchable.

Top all of that off with the realization that the death of Necros (Andreas Wisniewski) is the direct inspiration for one of my personal favorite pieces of short fiction I ever wrote, “50 Miles to Somewhere North of Cambodia.”

Is it possible The Living Daylights is actually one of my favorite Bond films. I’m going to call it. Yeah. It’s definitely up there with the Craig films for me, and even up there with the early Connery films. I’m owning that from now on.

*Which doesn’t exist. I assure you.