Franz Sanchez is the main villain from the James Bond film Licence to Kill. He was played by Robert Davi.

Robert Davi as Franz Sanchez.

Franz Sanchez as a character is almost uniquely realistic among Bond villains. Firstly, Sanchez is a drug dealer straight out of the real-world headlines (he is clearly based on Pablo Escobar, whose “Plomo or plata” creed is quoted). He is not a megalomaniac or terrorist and has no interest in global political domination, but only in expanding his drug trading clientèle and making more money. He pays off law enforcement and politicians in the manner of a real-life drug lord, but probably would have never faced Bond had he not attacked Felix and Della Leiter, and so become the subject of Bond’s personal vendetta.

Sanchez, unlike nearly all other Bond villains who tend to be sociopathic, despite his criminality is highly amiable – notably to his family-like gang of “amigos”. When loyalty and respect are given to him, their “Patron” reciprocates this, with affection, even, and rewards it very well. He originally shows significant hospitality to his Far-Eastern visitors and is extremely hospitable to Bond when he believes they have mutual enemies and that Bond is a mercenary for hire, unaware 007 is bent on assassinating him. However, the instant that loyalty to him is ruptured, Sanchez’s personality changes, not to the usual sadism, but to extreme cold ruthlessness. This is illustrated through his fury and gruesome annihilation of henchman such as Milton Krest who are one by one framed by Bond as being disloyal.

Biography: Franz Sanchez is a South American drug lord of mixed parentage (as his name indicates, one of his parents was German) whose empire based in Isthmus (a fictional republic) stretches from the north of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. He specialises in cocaine. He has an elaborate infrastructure for transporting his drugs – initially using submarines and later finding a process for dissolving cocaine in gasoline for covert transport. He also finances a televangelist, Professor Joe Butcher, in order to use his show as a contact point for his distribution network.

Befitting his wealth, he lives in lavish style, with multiple homes and a base where his drugs are processed hidden beneath Butcher’s remote meditation institute. He has a pet green iguana with a diamond collar, which perches on its master (in a manner similar to Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s cat). He is also known for his uncommon brutality in dealing with those he perceives as disloyal to him. Not everyone who crosses him is killed, as he believes “there are worse things than dying.” Sanchez brutally whips his girlfriend, Lupe Lamora, with a stingray-tail whip as a punishment for infidelity. It is also heavily implied that under his orders his henchmen remove the heart of a man she has slept with.

Sanchez is pursued by Bond’s old friend Felix Leiter, a former CIA operative who is working for the DEA. With Bond’s help, Leiter captures and imprisons Sanchez. However, after bribing a DEA agent with two million dollars, Sanchez escapes from prison and arranges an attack on Leiter after his wedding. His henchmen invade the Leiter house, abducting Leiter and raping and killing his new wife, Della. Sanchez then feeds Leiter to a shark and returns him to his home, seriously injured, and with a sick warning note: “He disagreed with something that ate him”, based on the behavior of Mr Big in the novel Live and Let Die.

Bond – who resigns MI6 when he is ordered to drop the matter – pursues Sanchez to Isthmus City seeking revenge, and infiltrates his organisation – which involves uniting drug dealing across the entire Pacific – in order to destroy it. At the fiery conclusion to the film, Bond sets the underground facility on fire and, when Sanchez attempts to escape with a convoy of his Maserati and petroleum tankers filled with his cocaine-gasoline blend, pursues and destroys them one by one. Bond then catches up with Sanchez and causes the last tanker to wreck with both of them on it. Just as a fuel-soaked Sanchez is about to kill him with a machete, Bond sets him on fire (using a special cigarette lighter given to him by Felix at the beginning of the film) and he stumbles in agony into the wreck, causing a huge explosion that incinerates the drug lord completely.

See also:

• Bond villains