Secret service

Dauntless British agent Charles Vine (Tom Adams) is called upon to escort to London the famed Swedish scientist Henrik Jacobs to negotiate the sale of a secret formula. However, sinister forces gambling for enormous stakes are already at work.

With the aid of his gun, Vine manages to extricate his charges from the most diabolical traps until the final battle in a mile-a-second showdown fought along the Thames dockside and culminating to a wild and unexpected climax.

I cast my mind back to 1987 when I was at school and I saw Licensed to Kill (2nd best Secret Service Agent in the whole wide world!) in the Radio Times film guide. A Bond Style spy thriller! Yippee! It was going to be on LWT ( UK TV) I called in sick from school just to see the film and I was sort of disappointed by the lack of excitement and grandeur ... however, I did like the shootout at the dockyards, the camera framing the alleyways - quite a tense shootout ...

Fast forward to now, I still think that it's the most exciting scene in what is a spy spoof film, which can be at times meandering, talky, confusing, absurd (a woman turning out to be a man), however it's redeemed by an adequate plot, some witty dialogue and Tom Adams, who has a cool air about him, even if he's a little stiff in his acting.

The Charles Vine character made quite an impression on me at 12 (maybe 13) years of age. The "other guy" 007 we are lead to believe, has some sort of distraction keeping him from the important task of protecting a defecting Soviet scientist with the secret of anti gravity or perpetual motion or somesuch breakthrough. Charles Vine will have to do. As Sammy Davis JR sings, He's The Second, Not the First, but The Second Best Secret Agent in The Whole Wide Worrrrld.

An "M" stand in looks Vine over and heartily disapproves of his hand cannon, a broomhandle mauser, in a special holster that covers his entire lower back. He has several scenes where he is blasting away with this great weapon. One car chase where he leans out the window with a long silencer on the ww1 vintage pistol "Thwipp, Thwipp, Thwipping" at the enemies car in the middle of busy daytime London traffic. Later, stoppped at an enemy roadblock, he does a trickey behind his back shot, shooting through his coat, then rolls into the middle of the road and from his back shoots the other enemies, shell casing flying. All of this action barely ruffles his hair.

His final battle places him against a master assassin with holey socks and his own silenced mauser. Charles Vine has to keep his cool and load the trickey top loading magazine of his mauser out of earshot of the close by Red assassin. The Gun was the co star. I have the very popular facsimile of the broomhandle mauser that is commonly used by fans of Star Wars to recreate the Han Solo blaster. What a horror to discover that this whole great memory of a blood thirsty intense spy drama is actually played as a super silly spoof. Completely tongue in cheek at all times. Catch it if you can. I have it on video tape and have no memory of how I came by it.

I saw this film when I was fourteen and now I'm 48. In the meantime, I've seen thousands of films but never again this film. Could I be mistaken in my memory of it, I asked myself. Then I got hold of Lindsay Shonteff's 'Big Zapper' and found a marvelous satire about most everything but especially about sex and violence, which is ridiculed most thoroughly in that film. I now believe my memory and this film is the one I most desire to see of all films lost to me. First of all, another reviewer wrote about 'black and white - photo'. This film was shot in wonderful color, especially vivid to me. There were the most endearing autumn colors. I fear there are some really gruesome copies out there, which do not do justice to this film. Now for the film. My impression of Tom Adams was then, that he made any other agent-actor, including Sean Connery and James Coburn (whom I both like), look like choir-boys in comparison. This man was no bull-s**t. Strapped on his back was a gun. He never drew it from where it was. He let it stay there and when meeting up with bad guys, he shot from the back, each time ruining an overcoat. He also had a small gun of one shot, which he could hide behind a matchbox if necessary and when offered a last smoke before dying, he reversed the cards. The gun on the back was however much more fun. In the end of the film, he is chased by 'Sadistikoff' (yes, a pun) through some alleys in the city, early in the morning (nobody else is around). Since everything is so quiet, he notices that his shoes are far too noisy. He takes them off and continues in his socks. Sadistikoff notices the same thing and takes his shoes off - you can see, that there are holes in his worn-out socks! Poor Russia. This silent scene all ends when Adams lets the lid of a garbage-can smash down and hides opposite it in a doorway or something of the kind. Sadistikoff comes in and empties his gun on the garbage-can. Adams steps out and Sadistikoff is history. Just to see Adams in this role again - what a treat! Will I ever again? I saw Adams in some spy-flick with Raquel Welch, in which he played a heavy. I was not mistaken. This guy really had charisma. Why was he stopped, I wonder? Refused to play ball? I don't know. Or was it Lindsay Shonteff, the director, who made Adams look so good and who is equally neglected? Quentin Tarantino hasn't seen this one, nor seems anyone else of those who claim to dig up lost diamonds. Dig this one up, if you can!

Well, I got a German copy of the film on VHS and must admit that time has not been too kind to it. The humor does however still remain and the film impresses now for the fact that it was obviously done on a shoestring budget.

It is also obvious, when seeing this film again, how little special effects mean in order to maintain your interest in a film. Had they blown up a real helicopter in the end of the film instead of no helicopter at all, which was the case obviously, it would not have made the film better or worse. In fact, action is highly overpraised. It is for idiots. A thinking man or woman look for other things in a movie, things that cost very little destruction and therefore little money. Such people look for a good plot that makes you feel more deeply or a dialogue that makes you think more deeply. The money then goes to the writer, the composer of music and the director who manages not to destroy a good plot and beautiful music and last but not least actors that are interesting people. This film had a decent plot and dialogue, a good craftsman of a director that could work with little money, very good actors and lousy music. Had Ennio Morricone done the score, it would have been a classic!

Let's be frank. This is one damp spoof. I'll go into the details of this deadly dull affair if, for some reason, you're interested. Tom Adams is Charles Vine, an inexperienced agent whose assignment is to keep an eye on a scientist (Karel Stepanek) as he prepares his formula for Regrav, a process that reverses gravitational waves. Vine is `a double 0 number, licensed to kill' and he certainly does make use of that particular privilege. During the course of the film Vine kills more than a dozen people. It's not the number that gives one pause, it's the callous and somehow nonchalant way he goes about it that is perturbing. Vine is, by his own confession, in it for the money but one suspects he gets a certain pleasure out of taking lives as well.

Stepanek (Our Man in Havana), as the Swedish scientist, gives the best performance of the movie but that's not saying much. The entire production is so lifeless that the actors seem to just want to get it over with, and one can hardly blame them. The film starts off with a bad taste killing when a nanny pulls a machine gun out of her baby buggy and slaughters a man in front of her two infant charges. Then we are treated to a lame theme song by Sammy Davis Jr. and it's all downhill from here, folks. The film suffers from poor pacing, badly choreographed gun battles and worse fight scenes and the whole thing feels much longer than its 95 minute running time.

If you've ever seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and wondered, where on earth that song the cast starts singing at the party comes from, the answer is this. Despite the US edit of this movie boasting a brilliant title song by Sammy Davis Jr, something the UK version desperately lacks, it doesn't stop Licensed to Kill from being a rather lacklustre 007 homage from unconventional Canadian genius Linsday Shonteff. Even with the dubious connections to Bond, he's name dropped many times throughout with clear references made to past adventures, it's extremely by the numbers in terms of its plot and characters despite the best efforts of Tom Adams as leading man Charles Vine and the rest of the cast. The film just gets lost in its own plot, about some device that can reverse the effects of gravity all the while it tries to add Cold War politics, counter-espionage and many many kidnappings into the mix. Licensed to Kill is on the lower tier of Shonteff productions but is still worth a watch to see how low-budget UK cinema can still deliver a fun time.