I never saw the two Daltons at the theatre when they came out, and didn't know anybody who did. I first saw them maybe 15 years later when I got a dvd player.
PROS
-more serious tone, after the last two films' retreat back to comedy
-grim gray gritty Cold War vibe with a dense twisty plot. Almost like leCarre, which is a major change of direction from all the epic comic book fantasies we've got used to.
-Third Man vibe, most explicitly in the Ferris wheel scene, but all through the Bratislava and Vienna scenes in the first half. This is not glamourous globetrotting Bond with all the hotels and beaches, this is serious spy story Bond, and the Central European street-scenes are dirty and depressing.
-clever introduction of the new actor, like that old panel/quiz show where the panelists had to guess which of three voices was the real celebrity. Did anybody watch the film not knowing what Dalton looked like and get fooled?
Also a chance to see some more double-ohs in action, even if they all die.
Better than introducing the new actor in a bathroom scene (as would happen to the next two fellows), though Dalton does get his own bathroom scene later on. (when he has to use a public lavatory full of people to inspect the cello case ... showing how little privacy there is in communist Czechoslovakia)
-There is finally some Fleming content even if it comes and goes very fast. Basically the adapted content fits into the larger story structure following the Octopussy formula, but this is a better Fleming story than Property... and they do more interesting job of adapting it.
The true-to-Fleming first act is the best part of the film.
Also: SMERSH finally appears in an EON film.
-there's also some Gardner content! the cargo plane fight is I think from Gardner's first book, and the war-room fight is I think from the fourth (?) book (sorry I haven't got those Gardner titles memorised).
-tonally anticipates the latest round of Craig films. Historically the pattern has been: silly actor, serious actor, and this is their second attempt to do it with a serious actor. So they will probably follow Craig with another crowd-pleasing comic actor?
-Dalton may be the most chaste Bond, but it is nice of him to take Kara to the opera. So is he more courtly than the previous Bonds? No, he is being very duplicitous throughout, manipulating Kara with a series of lies, and even this nice gesture is a cynical part of that manipulation. Which makes the Bond/girl relationship more interesting than most.
-speaking of the few female charactrs in this film, that lady who helps with the pipeline escape must be a contender for this other thread.
Also the dialog tells us she has worked with Bond before, so that's another unseen mission!
-a chance for young viewers to learn some history, with the sympathetic portrayal of the Mujahadeen
(whereas friendly westernised Russia has come and gone since this film came out and we're back where we used to be, so a young viewer might not even notice anything odd about the Cold War context)
CONS
-I'm sorry to say I don't buy Dalton as Bond. I just cannot suspend disbelief. Maybe because his interpretation is so actorly it's more obviously different from what Moore had been doing? Brosnan may have had the advantage because he wasn't trying to act, just fill the tux and look pretty as required, but Dalton is trying so hard to give the character his own spin and it's unrecognisable as any Bond we once knew.
-I dont know who A-ha is, but I like this song even less than Duran Duran's.
-and even though Barry is back, I found the music very uninteresting. Very bland score.
-I haven't got a clue what's going on with this plot. I'm not even sure why Yorgi faked his defection.
-the new M is still bland and ineffectual.
-the new Moneypenny is not memorable. perhaps this was a Lois Maxwell only role that could not be recast.
-the new Leiter? not even good enough to get invited back for the sequel. and is he supposed to be undercover as a pimp? why are those two attractive junior agents posing as hookers when they pick Bond up? That doesn't get explained and they're all gone from the film by the end of the scene, an irrelevant digression.
-DaltonBond does not get laid much. I used to think he seduced Kara in the Ferris wheel, but I now see their clothes are very much un-mussed when the ride ends. In one of the documentaries, Maryam d'Abo states as a fact her character did not sleep with Bond (and she is interviewing Carey Lowell from the next film, who states her character did not get any, either).
-Dalton cannot deliver the oneliners like Moore, and they should all have been dropped from the film. I think his first line is "one hour? better make that two", a variation of an old Connery gag, and he does not convince.
He is much better later on as he gets to grimace and twitch and fume and second guess himself, and I think his second film was much better suited to the unique DaltonBond persona.
