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12. You Only Live Twice (69%)

You Only Live Twice was the first Bond picture in which the absurdity of the series' central premise threatened to devolve into camp. It's the most gadget-heavy of the early flicks, and worse, the film takes the Bond films' gleeful abandonment of political correctness to new lows with its retrograde Asian stereotypes. You Only Live Twice finds 007 in Japan, hot on the trail of some lost U.S. and Russian spacecraft that have been hijacked by the nefarious SPECTRE. Twice has its moments; the Cold War intrigue is as palpable as ever, the locales are nicely captured, and the evil Blofeld's lair within a hallow volcano is one of the most memorable impregnable fortresses in the series. It's "one of the weaker Bond films, but still entertaining," wrote Jeffrey Westhoff of the Northwest Herald.

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11. License to Kill (72%)

If Glasnost, the thawing of relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was a positive step for world peace, it left 007 with less of a sense of purpose. Thus, with License to Kill, Bond found a new enemy that resonated in the late 1980s: international drug smugglers. In his second (and last) outing as Bond, Timothy Dalton heads to Miami to celebrate the wedding of close friend Felix Leiter. But on his honeymoon, Felix and his wife are abducted by brutal drug kingpin Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi). Bond is so distraught at what he sees as department indifference, he quits the secret service, vowing to take down Sanchez by himself. Though it might tread the same ground covered by Miami Vice, License to Kill is a sharp action picture; it's darker than many of the other Bonds, with Dalton again playing Bond with intensity, but it still has some solid chases and fight scenes. "Not since Dr. No has 007 been so cool and ruthless, and never has a plot been this close to realistic plausibility," wrote James Berardinelli of ReelViews. (Be on the lookout for a fresh-faced Benicio Del Toro, who plays one of Sanchez' henchmen.)

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10. The Living Daylights (72%)

Casino Royale wasn't the first Bond reboot that was hailed as a return to the darker themes of the 007 universe. Following the winking cheekiness of the Roger Moore era, Timothy Dalton played Bond in The Living Daylights with more debonair seriousness than previous installments. Perhaps too much; some critics complained that Dalton was lacking the beguiling sly humor of previous Bonds. In Daylights, Bond must protect a Russian defector from the KGB, and ends up pursuing an arms dealer who's illegally smuggling weapons into Afghanistan. Contemporary critics found the film to be a return to form for the series, but if The Living Daylights hasn't aged particularly well, it's an intriguing reconsideration of the iconic hero. "This Bond is as fast on his feet as with his wits; an ironic scowl creases his face; he's battle ready yet war-weary," wrote Richard Corliss of Time Magazine.