![]() ![]() I tried to pay attention to the music when taking notes and found my mind drifting quite easily. It doesn’t suffer from disco or odd electronica like some of the other entries and doesn’t really hurt the movie, but three out of four songs and most of the score are forgettable. This is perhaps the worst James Bond soundtrack. The action and suspense material tends to veer into anonymity, with the occasional Spanish guitar riff or sharp orchestral strike to add at least a little character. The music for the Gunbarrel sequence (heard in “James & Felix on Their Way to Church”) is pretty interesting and cool, with violent orchestral blasts (that match the tone of the film), kicking things off before the James Bond theme arrives. Thanks to the film’s Latin American setting, there is some Latin music, primarily in the romantic “Pam”. The only theme, at least the only recognizable one, is of course the James Bond theme, which does get a couple interesting variations. Perhaps due to his being hired very late in production, he fails to incorporate “Licence to Kill”, which has a couple ready-made melodies. The score from the pre-title sequence is split between three tracks! This in itself would be somewhat forgivable if Kamen was able to deliver on the thematic material. The tracks feature two or three different cues spliced together. There’s about half an hour of material on the album, and it is edited with little rhyme or reason. Michael Kamen’s score does little to redeem the situation. “Wedding Party” is repetitious and also a bit bland despites its Caribbean flavor. Even less memorable is “Dirty Love”, a bland, mediocre song sung by Tim Freehan. ![]() I personally don’t care much for it, and I’m struggling to even remember how the song goes. For the end credits is “If You Asked Me To”, sung by Patti Labelle. Several Bond songs in the Brosnan and Craig eras would follow suit. It runs over five minutes, which meant it had to be edited down for the opening credits. It’s pretty good, and actually utilizes the first two notes of Goldfinger’s theme. The title song is “Licence to Kill”, sung by Gladys Knight. There are four songs on the album, a mixed bag. Stepping in was Michael Kamen, who had scored many of the latest big-hit action films such as Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. John Barry was going to score Licence to Kill, but had to step out due to throat surgery. The James Bond series would go hiatus for six years, the longest break between entries it would ever experience, while the producers at Eon tried to take a step back and figure out a way to rejuvenate the franchise. Not helping was some tough summer competition from Batman and the latest installments of Star Trek and Indiana Jones. A radical, dark departure, the movie did not necessarily bomb, but underperformed in America. After drug lord Sanchez (played by Robert Davi), feeds Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter to the sharks, 007 goes on a hunt for revenge. ![]() After cold war thrillers and super-weapon plots, James Bond took a break to battle criminals in Licence to Kill. ![]()
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