The Living Daylights - Your 3 Favourite Scenes

This is going to be a tough one.

1. The Sniper Was A Woman
Effectively sets up the rest of the film - a tightly edited and scored sequence with a good dose of intrigue that is largely attributed to Ian Fleming himself. Glen and Dalton efficiently establish that he is James Bond, exuding danger and professionalism with a touch of humour and charm. It's classy, with the backdrop of the Cold War providing an evocative opening to one of the series best films.

2. Pushkin's Interrogation
Again, Dalton nails it. This is the Bond of the novels. And John Rhys-Davis is excellent too. Intelligently written with some sharp dialogue and performances. And some side boob is always good.

3. Car Chase
My second favourite Bond car. Admittedly, there are probably better scenes in the film than this, but it's so fun and the music is awesome that I have to include it. The snowy backdrop, the gadgets, the humour - it's good to see Dalton in a scene like this. One of the better car chases in the series, in my opinion. And for good measure, I'll throw in the cello case escape too!

1. The Russian Airbase Battle
As you can no doubt tell from my previous picks for other  Bond films I love me some action scenes and this one delivers. It felt grounded without anything really over-the-top while still kept at being exciting and epic plus I loved Bond's frustration with Kara with the eyeroll and mouthing possibly a word you don't expect in the film versions.

2. Pushkin's Interrogation
Exactly what FieldsMan said. Pushkin is an excellent character and the dialogue here is sharp and well-done.

3. Necros attacks the Safehouse
It's odd in hindsight as it's a big action scene without Bond actually being present but Necros is such a great character and here showed his cold-blooded professionalism impersonating multiple accents, taking out multiple guards, blowing up chunks of the house and having a flawless escape while still getting in some time to listen to The Pretenders. By the way "Where Has Everybody Gone?" might just be my favorite vocal Bond song and is used perfectly throughout the film.

Honorable mention to everything else in the movie. This was the hardest one to pick three scenes from as it's non-stop Bond bliss from start to finish. I've even come to love the Felix Leiter scene for all it's wooden "Start World-War-Three?" John Terry acting.

#1 Pushkin meets Whitaker: "Butchers." "Surgeons. They cut away society's dead flesh." Whitaker is a very, very interesting villain; extremely odd that he only has four scenes in the entire movie. The most underused villain in the entire series (that has any dialogue; General Chang doesn't even count).

#2 Kara pushing Kamran Shah to save James: Shah's one word response, "Women!", got the biggest laugh of the movie, but in 2016 we're probably too politically correct to use it. It's also a good example of having a "strong" female character that isn't trying to be "Bond's equal" or sacrificing her femininity by being some butch authoritarian who gets off on pushing men around. It's just a brilliant insight into human nature that cuts across all languages and cultures and exposes a truism about the dynamic between men and women.

#3 Bond's showdown with Whitaker: it's clever; almost like Scaramanga's fun house, but slightly more believable. "You had your eight, now I'll have my 80!". "Should've known you'd take refuge behind that British vulture, Wellington. You know he had to buy German mercenaries just to beat Napoleon."

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

#1 Pushkin meets Whitaker: "Butchers." "Surgeons. They cut away society's dead flesh." Whitaker is a very, very interesting villain; extremely odd that he only has four scenes in the entire movie. The most underused villain in the entire series (that has any dialogue; General Chang doesn't even count).

#2 Kara pushing Kamran Shah to save James: Shah's one word response, "Women!", got the biggest laugh of the movie, but in 2016 we're probably too politically correct to use it. It's also a good example of having a "strong" female character that isn't trying to be "Bond's equal" or sacrificing her femininity by being some butch authoritarian who gets off on pushing men around. It's just a brilliant insight into human nature that cuts across all languages and cultures and exposes a truism about the dynamic between men and women.

#3 Bond's showdown with Whitaker: it's clever; almost like Scaramanga's fun house, but slightly more believable. "You had your eight, now I'll have my 80!". "Should've known you'd take refuge behind that British vulture, Wellington. You know he had to buy German mercenaries just to beat Napoleon."

Now there's a new perspective. RE: #3, I've just always wondered by Bond kept shooting the bullet shield when he could have shot at his body. I like the scene though, especially with Felix guiding Bond through his garden at the start of it.

1. Bond interrogates Pushkin: In my book, the best moment of the entire franchise. This is Dalton at his best as Bond, giving us a great moment that shows Bond using his mind, his wits, and just being a plain bastard about it, which I'm sure was refreshing after seven Moore films.

2. The adaptation of Fleming's "The Living Daylights: The whole sniper sequence with Bond, Saunders, and Kara is terrific and a great update to Fleming's short story.

3. Cargo Net Fight: Perhaps not objectively the third best moment in the film, but for nostalgia reasons I'll list it. It's a great stunt, but it's also the first moment I remember seeing in a Bond film. I remember watching TV with my dad one morning and he was watching the tail end of TLD. I really enjoyed what I saw, but had no idea what it was. Wasn't until a while later when I rented TLD from the local video store that I'd realized that TLD was the first Bond movie I'd actually seen, even if unknowingly.

PTS
Sniper scene from the short story
Bond vs Whitaker

Bond interrogates Pushkin - though I do wish the lighting was moodier here

Bond gets the cello - the music cue starting here after "no way!" really puts the movie in a different gear, or at least a different light for me. My wife and I regret not using this music for our minimalist wedding ceremony.

Got about 20 other bits that could go in spot 3, but Kara's race to the plane is probably going to be the winner, again owing to the score (and I love Dalton's exasperated look when Kara initially doesn't know how to drive onto the plane.)