**

This film is an exercise in sadism and an adventure laced with brutality. In other words, it goes way overboard in the violence department. Sure, that bit with the sharks is from Fleming, but the novel LIVE AND LET DIE had already been filmed. Instead, the filmmakers not only take the opportunity to torture and dismember poor Felix Leiter, they also have his bride savagely murdered. But this whole drug smuggling plot is very passé and it's only a cheap cosmetic attempt to make the James Bond film series appear more relevant. Ripped from today's headlines, indeed. What a joke! Overall, this film would be a fine vehicle for someone like Steven Segal, but it's not really a true James Bond epic. Supposedly, Timothy Dalton went back to the Fleming novels to study the Bond character. However, the only aspects he appears to want to emulate come from the brutal scenes. Ian Fleming kept these to a minimum per novel, but here in this film they are strung back to back in an almost endless cycle of gleeful ruthlessness. But it must be pointed out that this script is not based on a James Bond novel since there were no more Fleming properties left to adapt to the screen. There are only very minor story elements that come from Fleming, but nothing really noteworthy. There was also a writers' strike at the time of this production. Richard Maibaum's involvement in the screenplay was extremely nil and it clearly shows within this film.