Directed by John Glen and produced by Albert R. Broccoli, The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond franchise and the first to star Welsh actor Timothy Dalton as 007. The plot follows Bond as he assists in the defection of a Soviet general, only to find himself entangled in a conspiracy involving arms dealing and opium trafficking across Cold War Europe and Afghanistan. The film grossed $191 million worldwide and marked a deliberate reset for the franchise: after years of Roger Moore’s lighter, more comedic Bond, Dalton brought a harder-edged, more literary interpretation closer to Ian Fleming’s original novels, which he read in their entirety in preparation for the role.
Behind the Scenes. The casting of Dalton was the result of a remarkable chain of near-misses. Pierce Brosnan had actually been hired for the role, with the script partially rewritten to suit his strengths, before NBC reversed its decision to cancel Remington Steele and refused to release him from his contract. Producer Albert Broccoli famously declared that James Bond would not be Remington Steele — and on the sixtieth day of NBC’s deadline to revoke the cancellation, at 6:30 in the evening, Brosnan learned the show was renewed. The role then went to Dalton, who had actually first been approached by Broccoli for the part of Bond back in 1967, when he turned it down at age 22, saying he was too young. During a visit to the Pinewood Studios set, Princess Diana discovered a prop bottle used for breakaway stunt work and smashed it over Prince Charles’s head. The photograph made front pages around the world. Charles, it was reported, was shaken — but not stirred. In one of the film’s more obscure Easter eggs, the bullet hits on a metal bulldozer scoop during the Afghanistan raid sequence are timed to play a brief fragment of the James Bond theme. The helicopter used in the film, registration G-HUEY, had previously been an Argentine Army aircraft captured by British forces at Port Stanley during the 1982 Falklands War.
The Watch. The Heuer — or TAG Heuer, depending on which version of the dial was used — Professional Night Diver reference 980.031 worn by Timothy Dalton’s Bond is one of the more quietly remarkable watches in the franchise’s history, partly because it went unidentified for decades. The watch appears only briefly, glimpsed on Dalton’s wrist during the opening Gibraltar sequence, and the screen time is so limited that watch historians could not initially confirm with certainty whether the dial bore the Heuer or TAG Heuer logo, the company having been acquired by the TAG Group in 1985 and rebranded in the years that followed. The identification was eventually completed through frame-by-frame analysis by specialist researchers cross-referencing the shield shape of the logo, the crown guard profile, and the case thickness. The 980.031 is an all-black PVD dive watch powered by a quartz movement, with a fully luminous dial and a matching black jubilee-style bracelet — a bold, stealthy aesthetic entirely consistent with Dalton’s vision of Bond. It was the first and only time a Heuer or TAG Heuer appeared on Bond’s wrist in the franchise. Notably, General Pushkin also wears a TAG Heuer in the same film — an Airline GMT fitted with a gadget trigger hidden in the crown — making The Living Daylights the Bond film with the highest concentration of Heuer timepieces of any entry in the series.
Details
Brand:
Marketplace Price
€1 200
Movie Year:
1987
As seen on:
Movie/TV Series:
