The Living Daylights (1987): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

The Living Daylights follows James Bond as he helps the Soviet general Georgi Koskov defect from Czechoslovakia, then is sent to kill General Leonid Pushkin. The story opens with a training exercise in Gibraltar, where a killer murders one of Bond's fellow 00 agents and Bond chases him down.

Bond is then sent to Bratislava to help Koskov reach the West. He spots the sniper who has been placed to stop the escape, sees that she is a cellist named Kara Milovy and not a professional, and shoots her rifle rather than her. That choice sets the whole film in motion.

Koskov reaches the West and tells MI6 that the KGB has revived a policy of killing spies, blaming Pushkin. Before he can say more, he is seized from a safe house. Bond is ordered to go after Pushkin, and the first act ends with that order.

The Living Daylights plot is a con in which Koskov fakes a defection so that Bond kills Pushkin, while Koskov and Brad Whitaker use Soviet money to buy opium. The steps below follow the order in which Bond uncovers it.

Step one: the staged defection. Bond helps Koskov escape from Czechoslovakia and spares Kara, the cellist sent to shoot him. Koskov tells MI6 that Pushkin is behind a plan to kill Western agents, and then he is abducted from a British safe house.

Step two: Tangier. Bond is sent to eliminate Pushkin. Instead he finds that Pushkin is not the villain and that Koskov's defection was staged.

Step three: Vienna. Bond learns that Kara is Koskov's girlfriend. Koskov and Kara are in Vienna, where Koskov's henchman Necros kills the MI6 contact Saunders. Kara, still deceived by Koskov, drugs Bond, and he is flown to a Soviet air base in Afghanistan.

Step four: the breakout. Bond and Kara escape with the help of the mujahideen leader Kamran Shah. They then discover that Koskov and the arms dealer Brad Whitaker are using Soviet money to buy opium, which funds their own weapons deals.

Step five: the cargo plane. Bond sabotages the plane carrying the opium and fights Necros while hanging from it. Necros falls to his death.

Step six: the finish. Bond goes to Whitaker's home in Tangier and kills him. Koskov is returned to Moscow in custody. Bond and Kara are reunited in Vienna, where she plays at a concert.

The Living Daylights had its UK premiere on June 29, 1987 (reported by TMDB) and its US release on July 31, 1987 (confirmed by The Numbers).

The Australian release was March 21, 1988, as reported by TMDB. TMDB is the only source for the UK premiere and Australian dates, so both are reported rather than confirmed, while the US date has a confirmed source. The UK premiere came about a month before the US release.

The film runs 130 minutes and carries a PG certification in the US, the UK and Australia. It is the 15th film in the official EON series (release order and chronological order). For the full run, see James Bond movies in order.

The ending resolves the con in three moves: Whitaker dies, Koskov goes home to face punishment, and Pushkin is cleared of the false accusation. The film ends with Kara's Vienna concert and her reunion with Bond.

The structure is a loop, in my reading. The film opens with a training exercise on the Rock of Gibraltar, where a killer murders a fellow 00 agent and Bond chases him down, and it closes on a performance instead of a chase. In between, Bond's decision in Bratislava to wound Kara's rifle rather than Kara is what keeps the finale human-sized. He sees a cellist and not a professional, and he spares her. Koskov then uses her, which makes Kara the one person deceived without being guilty, and her drugging of Bond in Vienna is the price of that deception.

The final act is the strongest part of the film, in my view, because every thread was seeded earlier. Bond is sent to Tangier to eliminate Pushkin and instead finds that the defection was staged. That is the hinge: the order to kill Pushkin was the whole purpose of the con, and Pushkin being cleared at the end is its direct reversal. There is production context behind Pushkin, too. According to Wikipedia, Walter Gotell was too ill to play a major role, so John Rhys-Davies was cast as Pushkin, and Gotell still appears as General Anatol Gogol. The Soviet side of the story therefore carries two generals who turn out to be on the side of the truth, set against Koskov, the general who lies.

The Afghanistan stretch widens the con from a political trick into a money scheme. After Kara's doping of Bond, he is flown to a Soviet air base, and the two of them break out with the help of the mujahideen leader Kamran Shah. The desert scenes were shot around Ouarzazate in Morocco. Only after the breakout do they learn that Koskov and Whitaker are spending Soviet money on opium, which pays for their own weapons deals. That reveal explains why Koskov needed Pushkin dead and the West alarmed: the staged KGB threat was cover for a private business.

The cargo plane fight with Necros is the mechanical centerpiece. Bond sabotages the plane carrying the opium, then fights Necros while hanging from it, and Necros falls to his death. That fight is the film's clearest set piece, since it ends the henchman and the smuggling run in one sequence. Necros had also killed the MI6 contact Saunders in Vienna, so his fall settles that account as well.

That being said, the true payoff is quieter: Kara's concert and the reunion, rather than an explosion. Whitaker's death at his home in Tangier, a location the film uses twice, first as the place where Bond learns the defection was staged and last as the place where the scheme ends, closes the plot, but the film chooses Vienna, where Kara plays, for its last image. As the 15th film in the official EON series, it puts a musician's return at the end where a villain's defeat could have been. The next film in the series is Licence to Kill.

The Living Daylights was filmed across Gibraltar, Austria, Morocco and the UK, with Vienna standing in for the Bratislava concert hall exteriors and interiors. Principal photography began in Gibraltar on September 17, 1986, according to Wikipedia, though the start date is disputed.

The locations break down like this:

• Gibraltar: the pre title sequence on the Rock
• Vienna, Austria: Bratislava concert hall exteriors and interiors, the tram scene and Schönbrunn Palace
• Carinthia, Austria: the border chase
• Tangier, Morocco: Whitaker's home
• Ouarzazate, Morocco: the Afghanistan desert scenes
• Pinewood Studios, UK: studio work
• Stonor House, Oxfordshire, UK: the safe house
• Beachy Head, UK: the airborne Land Rover shot

The choice of Vienna for the concert scenes suits Kara's story, since the film ends with her Vienna concert.

Pierce Brosnan was first lined up to play Bond in The Living Daylights, but NBC revived Remington Steele and did not release him, so Timothy Dalton took the role. Producer Albert Broccoli did not want a weekly TV series to dilute the Bond brand.

A few more facts:

• John Barry's score was his last for a Bond film.
• Walter Gotell was too ill to play a major role, so John Rhys-Davies was cast as General Leonid Pushkin.
• Red Cross societies objected to the use of their emblem in the film, and a disclaimer was added to the opening.

For the series-wide numbers, including this film's gross, see James Bond box office.