This scene from Licence To Kill (1989) is easily the most bizarre and awkward of the Dalton era. On Della and Felix Leiter’s wedding day, Bond and Della cavort around the wedding reception in a drunken stupor, almost as if they’re the betrothed themselves.

It starts off innocently enough with them falling into the room with the wedding cake, but their subsequent kisses are most definitely *not* innocuous and not innocent pecks on the cheek. I’d argue they are almost passionate. Did Bond and Della have a previous fling?

Although I wasn’t married in the 1980’s when this movie was released, I’m a married American and I’ve never heard of the “custom” where the bride kisses the best man. Did I miss the memo on that? This does not sound like a great custom. Just weird.

And then how Bond suggests that it’s “the other way around” – that the best man kisses the bride – as if the semantics of it matter at all. If any bride and best man are kissing on a wedding day like they do in this scene, something is way off. I feel bad for Felix, honestly!

“I’ll do anything for a woman with a knife.” This isn’t your first time??? How often do you interact with a woman with a knife that you apparently have this quote at the ready should situation arise. Bond says this way too flippantly. I’m not on the same page as you, 007…what the hell?!

James Bond (Timothy Dalton) and Della Leiter (Priscilla Barnes) in Licence To KIll (1989)