What followed was a Bond film unlike any that had come before. There were no grand schemes for world domination, no giant space lasers, and no hollowed-out volcanoes. The stakes were localized, intimate, and incredibly violent.
Released in 1989, Licence to Kill stands as the most radical and uncompromising turning point in the history of the James Bond franchise. It was the film that dared to strip away the tuxedo, the puns, and the gadgetry to reveal the raw, bleeding nerve of Ian Fleming’s original literary creation.
Licence to Kill became the first Bond film to receive a PG-13 rating in the United States (and faced heavy censorship cuts in the UK to avoid an 18 certificate). Audiences were treated to shocking imagery: a man's head exploding in a decompression chamber, a villain shredded in a industrial drug-grinder, and Leiter being fed to a shark.
With Licence to Kill , director John Glen and longtime producer Albert R. Broccoli decided to take the ultimate gamble. They would take James Bond out of the British Secret Service.