This film is an exercise in sadism and an adventure laced with brutality in an almost endless cycle of gleeful ruthlessness. 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. The filmmakers abandon the spirit of the Ian Fleming novels and present us with this rather mundane drug smuggling narrative instead of a espionage story. The filmmakers also jettison the sophistication of Fleming's literary creation and only provide a monochromatic action hero who attacks without any thought. Since the filmmakers don't provide any reason here to utilize Fleming's suave British secret agent, they have simply replaced him with just a brutish and vengeful thug -- a type of character more suited to the thespian talents of Steven Seagal rather than Timothy Dalton. 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 writer's strike at the time of this production. Richard Maibaum's involvement in the screenplay was extremely nil and it clearly shows within this film.

Timothy Dalton could have made a few more James Bond films had it not been for what happened during the sale of MGM/UA a year after the release of LICENCE TO KILL. In 1990, MGM/UA was to be sold for $1.5 billion to Qintex, an Australian-American financial services company that had begun making television broadcast and entertainment purchases. When Qintex could not provide a $50 million letter of credit, the deal fell apart. Giancarlo Parretti, CEO of a company called Pathé Entertainment (unrelated to the French studio Pathé) quickly moved in to buy MGM/UA for $1.2 billion and merged the companies to create MGM-Pathé Communications. Parretti intended to sell off the distribution rights of the studio's catalogue so he could collect advance payments to finance the buyout. This included international broadcasting rights to the James Bond film library at cut-rate prices.

This lead Danjaq (the company founded by producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman that held the copyright and trademarks to the characters, elements and other material related to James Bond on screen) to sue, alleging the licensing violated the James Bond film distribution agreements the company made with United Artists in 1962, while denying Danjaq a share of the profits. Countersuits were filed. When asked what he would do following resolution of the lawsuits, Timothy Dalton told Albert R. Broccoli that it was unlikely that he would continue in the role. Giancarlo Parretti was eventually found guilty of misuse of corporate funds and of securities fraud and this led to the bankruptcy of MGM-Pathé. Additional lawsuits eventually resulted in a foreclosure by financial backer Crédit Lyonnais in 1992. The James Bond film rights lawsuits were settled in December 1992, and the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, now run by a Crédit Lyonnais subsidiary, began to explore further development of Bond 17 with Danjaq in May 1993. Timothy Dalton was still Broccoli's choice to play Bond, but the star's original seven-year contract with Danjaq expired in July 1993. Dalton has stated that the delay of his third Bond film effectively ended the contract in 1990.