Licence To Kill

Licence To Kill, simply put, is the most controversial James Bond movie (at least, so far...).

I think that it's safe to say that critical opinion about this film, both among "real" critics and Bond fans, is far more sharply divided that any other.

Yes, every Bond film is simultaneously someone's favorite and at the same time someone's worst. That's part of the fun.

But usually some sort of "critical consensus" forms about a movie. Yes, there are outlying opinions, but usually the reaction to a Bond film fall within a particular range.

But not Licence To Kill. This movie seems to be the literal definition of "love it or hate it." There rarely seems to be any middle ground--many, many reviewers have it amongst the best or amongst the worst. From what I've seen, there seems to be a greater standard deviation of opinions on this film than any of the other Eon Bonds.

Now, I'm a fairly tolerant person, opinion-wise. If you hate a Bond movie I love, or love one I hate, I can dig that. I don't agree, but I respect your right to feel that way. And usually, I can understand where our difference of opinion comes from, even if I disagree. If you like Diamonds Are Forever more than I do, or hate For Your Eyes Only, I can understand where you're coming from, even if I ultimately disagree. If you want to say that From Russia With Love is too slowly paced and rank it 7 spots below You Only Live Twice, well, I think you're crazy, but more power to you.

But, with regards to LTK, I have one question for everyone who absolutely hates this movie:

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS??

Seriously, LTK is a great, great James Bond movie. And yet, it gets nowhere near the respect it deserves. And those who don't like it...well, they loathe it. Even some people who should like it--they like the "realistic" Bonds, they hate the bloated spectacles and over-the-top humor--come out bashing on this film.

So allow me to alter the form of my review, for a least a little bit, as I defend the movie against some of the reasons people have used to diss on it.

**LICENCE TO KILL IS RACIST/USES ETHNIC STEREOTYPES

Even if this charge is right, it sure seems to be an odd place to bring it up, as Dr. No and Live And Let Die, just to name two, are far worse violators.

In some quarters, especially in 1989, it was fashionable to critique LTK as condoning stereotypes by having Bond oppose a Latin American drug lord. Somehow, that was racist, or at least ethnically insensitive, by somehow promulgating the one dimensional portrait of all Latin American countries as corrupt narcocracies.

Well, in the first place, there were corrupt Latin American governments that worked hand in hand with various drug cartels. Just a few months after LTK was released, the United States invaded Isthmus...oh, I mean Panama...and deposed Manuel Noriega for essentially turning his country into a one-stop money-laundering drug trafficking. So, "ethnically insensitive" or not, the portrait painted in this movie had the undeniable defense of being true.

Secondly, look at the history of drug lords in the Bond movies. We've had African Americans and Caribbeans (LALD), Greeks (FYEO), Afghans, white Americans, and Russians (TLD). So the viewpoint of the franchise has hardly been one of "all drug problems originate in South America." Even within this movie, we meet a pack of Asian drug lords. And virtually every one of Franz Sanchez's senior cronies is a gringo. So the objection only makes sense if your rule is "you can show every other nation and ethnicity as running drugs, but if you show a powerful Hispanic drug lord, you're suddenly offensive." Obviously, I reject any such rule.

**THE MOVIE IS TOO SERIOUS/NOT FUNNY

Richard Maibaum himself said this...he only worked on the outline and (some portion of) the first draft, because of the writers' strike of 1988. But it's a common criticism.

Were these guys watching the same movie I was? This movie has tons of humor. What it doesn't have are the groan-inducing puns and ridiculous "haha Bond is driving a gondola on dry land!" moments that passed for humor in other Bond movies. But Sanchez is hilarious (in an evil way, obviously), and there are lots of moments of dry humor and situational humor between Bond and Pam, Bond and the bank manager, Bond and Q, Pam and Wayne Newton, Truman-Lodge is hilarious...look, just watch the movie again. In many subtle ways, there actually is an awful lot of humor here.

In this film, Bond is a man driven mad by the need to avenge the maiming of his best friend and murder of his bride on their wedding day (which obviously James knows something about). The overt jokiness of the Roger Moore era would have been totally inappropriate in such a context. Now, you can argue that such material might therefore be inappropriate for a Bond film, and we can discuss that. But to say the film isn't funny enough? Please.

And if LTK is "too serious," well, so what? There isn't room for a more serious entry in the franchise? Are we to be locked forever into cookie-cutter, paint by numbers Bond movies, with no room to try anything new or different?

Maybe our tastes have changed. Just for the sake of comparison, why is this film "too serious" and "not funny enough," when the Bourne films are praised so highly? Go ahead an find me an iota of humor or non-seriousness in those movies...they make LTK look like a Matt Helm picture. Casino Royale (2006) was pretty grim-toned, as well. Maybe the late 2000's are a better fit for this type of movie than the late 1980's, with visions of pigeons doing double takes still dancing in our heads.

**IT'S NOT BOND--A MUNDANE REAL WORLD VILLAIN, NOT MANY EXOTIC LOCALES, ETC.

It's funny...the villains' plot in TLD and LALD was to run drugs. Was that "not Bond?" Goldfinger visited Miami (in stock footage) and Kentucky. Was that "not enough exotic locales?" Bond unnecessarily goes back for revenge at the end of Octopussy and TLD. Are those movies "Death Wish or Rambo, but not Bond?"

There has never been a static, arbitrary definition of what Bond is. OHMMS can be sandwiched between YOLT and DAF...Moonraker can be followed by FYEO followed by Octopussy. Whatever magic criteria you suggest that would somehow exclude LTK from being what Bond is supposed to be about is also going to have to exclude some films you do approve of.

**IT'S TOO VIOLENT

Whereas having your gonads crushed with a carpet beater is OK, I guess.

I recommend that people who say that LTK was "too violent" go and read the Fleming novels, because despite being written 30 years earlier, they had a level of violence that makes LTK look like Austin Powers. Bond was regularly tortured, and the villains and henchman died terrible, painful and humiliating deaths. Saying something is "not Bond" because it's "too violent" shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what James Bond is. Felix getting chewed up by a shark? Straight from the Live And Let Die novel (along with the exact wording of that note).

As to the actual violence in the movie, there's less than you think. Much of it is actually offscreen, with direction and editing to create the impression that's it's so bad. Lupe's lover's heart is removed offscreen, for example (unlike the heart removal in the also-PG-13-rated Temple of Doom). You don't actually see any of Felix's injuries (or Killifer's for that matter). We see just a red mist, not any of Dario's limbs getting ground up (not unlike the snowplow scene in OHMSS)...In a film titled Licence To Kill, about an agent with, you know, a licence to kill, and who has killed lord knows how many bad guys by this point in time, it's odd to get overly squeamish about violence, isn't it? This isn't a country club! Plus, compared with other movies out simultaneously, LTK has a rather light death count. More people died in Batman...more people died in Last Crusade (but that's OK, because they were Nazis!), and more people died in Lethal Weapon 2. For that matter, more people died in TLD, VTAK, TSWLM, etc, etc.

Enough. To heck with the haters. It's time to talk about why this movie rocks so hard.

As Michael Wilson ended up doing most of the writing, he gets most of the credit. There are a couple of Fleming crumbs around here--the character of Milton Krest and his boat the WaveKrest come from the short story The Hildebrandt Rarity, the title LTK was obviously a Fleming phrase (albeit never used as a title in his work), Felix's fate comes from the LALD novel--but the full story of LTK is wholly original to the movie. And Wilson knocked it out of the park.

The main idea is dazzlingly simple: Bond's friend is brutalized, Bond goes rogue to get revenge. That's it. During an era when many critics began to whine that Bond movie plots were "incomprehensible" and "impossible to follow," we get a simple premise that many of those same critics rejected as "not Bond." Sigh...


But the beauty part is the way Wilson sets it up and makes it so very compelling. First, it's not just any friend, it's here-from-the-beginning ally Felix Leiter. And for the first time, a returning actor as Felix Leiter, which helps to strengthen the perceived bond between them (and, I should mention, someone who can actually act, which sadly has never seemed to be a requirement for the role). And it wasn't just that Felix was mauled--he was mauled on his wedding day, at which Bond was best man, and his wife was killed. Note the way we get a deliberate callout of Bond's previous marriage, so we remember Bond's OHMSS tragedy, and understand why he is so obsessed with getting revenge for Felix.

Secondly, there's no "I'm taking a leave of absence" while M winks at Bond going off on his own. Continuing the theme set up in TLD, the bureaucracy is set up against Bond. This is the American's affair, and besides, you're supposed to be in Turkey!! Meanwhile, the Americans won't do anything because of extradition treaties and sovereignty and, well, just because, I guess. There's no time, no institutional imperative, to help individual agents or seek true justice--that's "sentimental rubbish." So Bond not only has to undertake his incredibly dangerous revenge mission, he has to do it while overcoming opposition from the British, from the Americans, from the Isthmusites...and then Hong Kong Vice, and then his own allies. The movie keeps putting more and more obstacles in his way.

But, unlike some unfavorable reviews, this is no Rambo or Death Wish knock off. Bond doesn't go in like some Terminator, guns ablazing. In fact, not very much outright killing is actually done by Bond himself. Instead, he uses his wiles and skills to infiltrate Sanchez's group, and proceeds to gaslight Franz into killing most of his own associates. Watching Bond play Iago to Sanchez, and destroy him piece by piece, is enormously satisfying.

Timothy Dalton's performance makes it all work. His 007 sees his own tragedy replayed in Felix's life, and is obsessed, almost beyond the point of reason, with revenge. Some people didn't care for Dalton's take on Bond, and I can appreciate that, but I don't see how anyone cannot appreciate the performance he gives here. More than any other actor in any other Bond movie, here Dalton IS the personification of Ian Fleming's James Bond, a cold-blooded killer usually restrained by his mission for queen and country. Stripped of that, and driven by vengeance, Dalton gives us a Bond who you can believe has been pushed past the point of rationality, who will stop at nothing to get the bastard who maimed Leiter.

Franz Sanchez makes a wonderful foil. Robert Davi gives us a smooth, self-confident drug lord, a man who is so comfortably the master of his own universe that he feels invulnerable. No, he's not interested in genocide, or blackmailing the world--why bother when you're already wealthier than anybody else, and control the government?? But gaze past the drug lord persona, and Sanchez is a classic Bond villain--self-absorbed, always speaking in platitudes which he doesn't follow himself, possessive, vain...give him a nuclear powered laser, and he'd fit right into most other Bond movies. Hell, when one of the Asian drug lords dares to merely ask a reasonable question, Sanchez sends the army to blow up his villa!! That's Blofeld worthy!

The fun part is the way Sanchez is done in by his own platitudes. He likes to go on about how it's not about the money, it's about the loyalty, and about his word. But like the televangelist obsessed with fornication, he's merely covering up his own weakness. Despite the "it's not about the money," everything he did was about dollars. He said he prized loyalty, but he always had to buy it. He threw cash around--to the president of Isthmus, to Killifer, to Bond after Krest is killed--as a reward. That's not loyalty, that's bribery. And Sanchez's loyalty was one-way...he allowed the merest whispers to sour him on Krest, on Heller, on Truman-Lodge. Granted, Bond did a lot to turn him paranoid, but the moment push came to shove, his only loyalty was to himself. The same with his "word of honor": once the heat was turned up, he was perfectly willing to rip off the Asians of their half-billion and their cocaine. Truman-Lodge calls him on it, and gets shot. Sanchez's fall is almost Shakespearean.

Without grabbing my stopwatch, I believe Sanchez probably gets more screen time than any other Bond villain, from the teaser until the end. And he gets more face time with Bond. And unlike most Bond villains, we get a real character arc with Franz. With that, and Davi's memorable portrayal, I'm very confident when I declare that not only was Sanchez the best Bond villain of the eighties, he's also the best Bond villain we'd seen in 20 years.

Bond and Sanchez also embody the theme of recklessness--Sanchez through overconfidence, Bond through obsession. Sanchez goes to the Bahamas to personally bring back Lupe, when he could have easily just allowed his goons to do it. By letting Leiter live, he blows Krest's operation out of the water. Even if Bond hadn't tracked it down, Felix had seen enough to lead the authorities there. Despite warnings, he takes the Asians to his secret lab. And he lets a former British agent into his inner circle, with virtually no background check or guards. Sanchez believes he's invulnerable, which leads him to keep taking ridiculous chances, which leads to his downfall.

Bond is also ridiculously reckless. Despite the fact that some of Sanchez's men had to have seen him in the Bahamas, on the WaveKrest, and in the bar with Pam, Bond strolls right into the lion's den. It's mere luck he's not outed immediately. When he comes out of hiding on the WaveKrest, unarmed and vastly outnumbered, that's pretty much the definition of reckless. He's so careless that he doesn't even notice he's being tailed by Hong Kong ninjas, and he's lucky his mission didn't end there (either being shipped back to England or killed in Heller's assault). He keeps rejecting assistance from Pam and Q, even though he can't possibly succeed without them.

But unlike Sanchez, Bond realizes what he's doing and shapes up. After realizing he's blown a Hong Kong vice sting and gotten some British agents killed, and after realizing he'd queered Pam's deal with Heller to retrieve the stinger missiles, he begins to understand the consequences of his actions. After the wake-up call, he's still driven and focused, but he's much more willing to accept help, and much more careful about the collateral damages his quest is calling. Only Sanchez's men get hurt after that.

Speaking of Sanchez' men, Dario is one scary-ass mofo. The future Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro was a mere stripling of 22 when LTK was filmed, but he owns the screen whenever he's on it. The audience is unable to tear their eyes away from the palpable menace he radiates. Let me ask you--was there ever a creepier line in the entire history of Bond films than "we gave her a real nice honeymoooooooooon"?? It's too bad that in order to preserve Bond's secret, the story had to keep Dario offscreen for most of the middle of the movie (ostensibly to pick up the stingers from the contras, who had earlier kicked him out for being too nasty..hmmm). I do wish Wilson had found a way around that, as more Dario would have been a good thing. A great henchman.

Another thing the movie does is stuff itself to overflowing with a crazy wonderful set of characters. Even the smallest roles, like the bank manager, stick in your mind. From Professor Joe to Heller to Truman-Lodge to Krest to Sharkey to Killifer to poor poor Della, this movie is more populated than many other 007 films, chock full of memorable supporting roles and fun performances.

The movie is also enhanced by some outstanding stunt work, and great set pieces. The "lassoing" of Sanchez's plane, while ridiculous, is fun. The "waterskiing" scene is great (although I have to ask...since the plane didn't turn and was accelerating for take-off, how did Bond manage to catch up to it and grab on?? Bad physics, methinks.) Of course, the cherry on the sundae is the tanker truck chase. Yes, the trucks were specially modified to do the wheelie and the "drive on one side's wheels" (there's a great feature on that on the DVD), but they really did the stunts, and the whole sequence makes a thrilling climax to the movie. Great driving, great explosions, exciting direction...it's the most satisfying Bond climax since FYEO.

Alas, the movie isn't perfect, I will acknowledge. We have two Bond girls this time out, neither one quite reaching the upper tier in my book. Talisa Soto is...well damn it, she's frakkin' gorgeous. She's maybe even the most beautiful woman ever in a Bond movie. (Aside: The human race was doomed to extinction the moment she married Benjamin Bratt...their plan: to spawn a race of super-beautiful humans who will subjugate the ugly spuds like us...) Sadly, however, she's no great actress. Her range is quite limited, and her attempts to extend beyond that come up sounding flat and emotionless (at best). Lupe is also far too passive. Aside from lying about seeing Bond on the boat, she does nothing at all to help James rescue her or topple Sanchez. She's nowhere to be seen for the final half hour of the film, until the very, very end, where she shows up reaping the rewards of apparently inheriting Sanchez's belongings without doing any of the heavy lifting.

Meanwhile, Carrie Lowell (currently seen 27 times a day on Law & Order reruns) fares a little better. She's no great shakes as an actress herself, but compared to Soto she's Streep. But the tone of her performance often feels the teensiest bit off. She's supposedly been flying in Latin America for years, and is now working for the CIA, but she never quite comes off with the requisite toughness...or at least not consistently She comes off alright in the bar scene, but after that she seems to cycle endlessly between competence and confusion, between plucky resourcefulness and helplessness. Part of that comes down to the script, but part of it is also Lowell's apparent inability (and director John Glen's?) to find a firm grasp on the character. Watching Pam is rather like riding a roller coaster, she's so all over the place.

That being said, Pam is a good companion for Bond, she's helpful, she's (mostly) good in the clutch. Unlike many Bond girls, she knows how to use her sexuality to get her way with men, like Professor Joe. She flies, she can handle a gun , she can improvise well in a pinch....Now if only she had thought to tell Bond about the Attorney General's deal with Heller, things might have gone better...

But oh, dear lord, what a TERRIBLE ending. Never has such a good Bond film worked so hard in the final 2 minutes to undo everything it's done so well for the previous two hours. It's uncanny how off-kilter and rushed it seems. Felix Leiter has recently lost a wife and a limb (it looks like he gets to keep the arm), but his phone call with Bond is jovial with no acknowledgment of what's gone on. "Go fishing? Great!! That'll make up for my lost honeymoooooon!" Meanwhile, Bond has risked his own life and limbs, and thrown away his career. Does Felix even say thank you? Nope. It's as if they beamed this scene in from a different movie!! Sure, you don't want to end on an overly grim note, but after a gritty and relentless story, aren't we entitled to some emotional closure, rather than a sitcom closing laugh?

Also botched in the ending? M passing on his message through Leiter. Even if it was gruff and unforgiving, we needed to see M say he wanted Bond back, not have that relayed through a third party. Bond's off-handed "why don't you hook up with the President, Lupe?" is so casual and so comes out of nowhere that the audience thinks that Bond has to be joking. As far as we've seen, Bond hasn't even met the President, and suddenly he's throwing the dude his cast-offs? Worst of all might be Pam, on the final drop of her emotional roller coaster. Suddenly she stalks off crying when she thinks Bond is going to choose Lupe...I'm sorry, this really hurts the character for me. Instead of screaming "Bullshit!" like she did earlier, or confronting Bond and Lupe angrily, suddenly Pam is a crier??

So much damage done in two minutes...the whole tone of the movie lost, characters behaving randomly...it's as if they didn't have the final scene done yet, and had some gopher on the set scribble something down with five minutes to go until filming. And don't get me started with the winking fish!

Still, despite that, this is a top tier, nay, top 5 Bond movie. I love virtually every frame of this movie, and could go on for much much longer if Ichose to. Would I want every movie to be like this? No. But I'm thankful that the producers have the good sense to throw a curve at us every once in awhile, that they're not so sedentary that they keep repeating the same movie over and over again. Having Bond do something completely different reminds us of how much we appreciate the usual trappings, while at the same time expanding our understanding of what is possible in this franchise. And as we take the first full steps into the truly post-Fleming Bond era, ironically we get the most Fleming-like Bond movie of all.

And so we come to the end of the Dalton era. Although it was a mere two films, it was a fairly good two films, with clever adaptations of whatever Fleming material was left, and a move to push the character in a new direction. Sadly, interminable legal entanglements would put the franchise on hold for six years, and Timothy Dalton decided to move on with his career rather than wait around. That's too bad, because I rather enjoyed his take on Bond, and I remain convinced that had he been able to put another couple of movies under his belt, his stature would be greatly enhanced. Instead, the "only two movies" label makes it too easy to lump him into a group with "only one movie" Lazenby. But after the iconic Bonds by both Sean Connery and Roger Moore, Dalton and the writers were bold enough to give us yet another completely different Bond, distinct from his predecessors yet true to his literary origins. Dalton didn't shrink from portraying Bond as rash, as a deadly assassin, a man with no time for bureaucracy, as a man jaded beyond belief yet willing to throw everything away for a friend, for justice. That was a radical break from the past, and Dalton made it work. Thank you, sir.

Whither Bond from here? After deaths and retirements among the Eon brain trust, after never-ending legal travails, Bond would go in an exciting, fascinating new direction. But all the media would hear is one phrase: "Sexist, misogynistic dinosaur." Sigh...

SNELL'S RANDOM NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Lupe's lover had armed guards, who were killed by Sanchez's men...who was this guy? Another drug dealer, a rival? Some VIP? Did he know what he was getting into? Surely Lupe knew the consequences of getting caught...did she warn him?

**Can a helicopter really keep pace with a plane? I admit to absolutely zero aeronautics knowledge, but that always seemed odd to me...

**How I always pictured my wedding day would be:

**"Don't let him take you alive." Really? Narcotics agents with suicide pills? Really? Then again, knowing how Sanchez treats cops he catches, maybe it's a good idea...

**Sanchez's financial wizard, played by Tony Stark, ladies and gentlemen!!

OK, not that Tony Stark, but actor Anthony Starke.

By the way, was it just me, or back in the day did everybody say that the part of Truman-Lodge should have been played by Michael J. Fox? He was in the limelight as uber-capitalist-wannabe Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties. But Tony Stark is THE capitalist, so...

**My spellchecker reaaaaally hates the British spelling of Licence. I'm just sayin'...

**Isthmus is only the second fictional nation in the Bond franchise, along with San Monique in LALD. Not coincidentally, I'm sure, both depicted governments involved in narcotics trafficking. Oh, c'mon, Eon, did you really care whether or not Panama was offended? If you can say mad Russian generals want to run drugs, why can't you set this movie in a real country?

**So, I guess Bond forgot all his ninja training from YOLT, huh? He's taken out like a punk by two Hong Kong ninjas, and showed no martial arts knowledge at all.

**Since we're doing old home week, in bringing back Felix Leiter, why not bring back Quarrel Jr. from LALD as well? Who's this Sharkey cat?

**Not only is the theme song kind of blah, after its release it was found to be..ahem..."based upon" the horn line from Goldfinger. Credit was given, royalties were paid...but "blah" and ahem "based upon" make two strikes for this song. Matters aren't helped by the sappy "If You Asked Me To" over the end credits...

**So Sanchez has a huge hidden underground complex, an ultra advanced drug lab, state of the art for cocaine smuggling, costs millions of dollars...and one beaker of gasoline is enough to completely destroy it?

Seriously, I understand that drug lords might not follow OSHA standards or face fire department inspections...but since at any given time there are THOUSANDS of gallons of gasoline sitting around that complex, wouldn't you think there'd be SOME fire suppression technology around? That maybe the guys with extinguishers who ran in could have stopped what was a fairly small fire?

**The Hemingway House is a private for-profit tourist attraction. So, why does MI-6 gets to use it?? Did they pay a lot of money? Is the Hemingway House owned by Universal Exports, and thus a permanent front for British intelligence? The federal government made the Hemingway House an official National Historic Landmark--would they let a foreign government use that as an HQ? Is MI-6 squatting? Are there secret MI-6 snipers in the Statue of Liberty??

**Wayne Newton is god. And Professor Joe Butcher is hilarious. No dissent will be tolerated on this matter. Danke Schoen.

**Goodbye M, or rather Robert Brown as M. You give us a good farewell performance, a dynamite scene with Bond, but I still wish you'd had a final scene to reconcile with Bond (or fire him for good).

**Goodbye also to Caroline Bliss' Moneypenny. Too many tears, not enough sexy, sorry. At least she was bright enough to call Q for help.

**Goodbye, Albert Broccoli. This was the last film he would do any actual producing on, as he stepped aside to let his daughter and stepson take the reins. It's easy to forget Broccoli's contribution to the series, but without him, we would never have seen the Bond franchise, at least as we've come to know it. It was his deep love for Fleming's character that caused him to pursue the film rights several times, it was his passion for the project that convinced United Artists to commit to a six-picture deal when no one else seemed interested (and only days before Harry Saltzman's option on the novels expired). It was his commitment to Bond that kept him at it when the first two films didn't become break-out hits, and it was also his commitment that kept him from playing on the fame of his series by spreading himself too thin--he focused almost exclusively on 007. The stories are too numerous to tell here, but it's remarkable how there are almost no negative stories about the man. Thank you, Cubby, from all of us.

**President Lopez is partially a blast from the past, as he is played by Pedro Armendariz, Jr., the son of the man who played the much beloved Kerim Bey in FRWL. It's too bad LTK couldn't give him more to do...

**I declare the Polaroid camera with laser beam flash that takes x-ray pictures to be the best gadget ever.

**This is the first time we've seen Bond playing blackjack. At first he loses, playing "like a real jerkoff," which convinces Sanchez that it's OK to raise the limits. Then Bond starts winning huge. Runs like that are fairly unlikely just with normal luck...was Bond counting cards??

**Bond was on the run, Q hadn't contacted him, yet...so where exactly does a rogue agent go to get a fake manta ray costume?? Does some shop in Miami specialize in those??

**Maybe those stingers weren't such a threat after all...Sanchez's goons miss Bond's truck at close range (thanks to trick driving, admittedly), and Sanchez himself barely nicks Pam's cropduster when it's onlya few feet away!!

**Hat tip to Peter Lamont for some great sets, including Sanchez's crib, and the wonderful Olimpatec Meditation Institute.

**Bond Score: 2. Lupe and Pam. Cumulative Bond Score: 45

And, as always:

It will take six years, though. But it will only take me a week...