I liked Dalton as Bond, the problem he has was his films coming toward the end of the over-inflated, over-long, over complex stories that seemed typical of the later films. The Living Daylights is a fine 105 minute movie lost inside a 210 minute one.
*License to Kill * could have been made with any of the late 80’s action movie actors as a stand-alone film rather than a Bond and been a lot better without the extra baggage that entails.
Dalton’s 6’2". Bruce Lee was only 5’7½".
A friend of mine, long before Craig got tapped, remarked that Dalton was the first actor to play Bond as a stone cold killer, a man with few or no real emotions who fakes it real well, but basically is in it because he enjoys the thrill and the kill.
Add me to the list of people who think the Dalton Bond films are seriously underrated. The Moores and the later Connerys don’t hold up well at all. I recently rewatched the two Daltons and they hold up surprisingly well.
Licence to Kill. It had a few over-the-top moments, but they were incidental to the main story. It had several shout-outs to Ian Fleming’s stories, which I thought were cool.
Dalton is a good actor. The problem was the writing and directing.
I liked them both, Dalton WAS Bond.
Nitpick : Moore was 58 years old when he made his last Bond movie.
One thing I am trying to remember is if there was a campaign to get Brosnan to play Bond at the time Dalton got the role. I am wondering if Dalton was seen as nothing more than a place holder until Brosnan was done with Remington Steele and whatever other projects he had going until Golden Eye.
Brosnan was the odds-on favorite to become Bond at the end of the Moore era. He would have become Bond, except that the notoriety he was receiving as the “next James Bond” induced NBC to renew Remington Steele for a fifth season, having previously decided to cancel it. The Bond people decided they didn’t want a Bond who was still being seen on the small screen in a weekly series, so they terminated their pursuit of Brosnan and turned instead to Dalton.
Remington Steele, as it turned out, didn’t actually run as a regular show that fifth season. Instead, it had a series of extended episodes (seven or eight, I can’t remember, and am too lazy to go look it up on my DVD set). Basically, Brosnan got completely screwed over by the whole thing.
I have a very vivid memory of Dalton looking short in his two movies. I must have a very vivid, but somewhat out-of-kilter memory. 
I liked Dalton the best until Craig.
I think the story was Dalton did two and then Cubby Broccoli died, and there was a big legal wrangle over who had the rights to make Bond movies. By the time it was resolved, Dalton wanted to move on, and Brosnan took over (and they went back to making ridiculous movies).
I’ve always looked at the Dalton and Craig introductions as being quite parallel to one another, where both came on to infuse a real grit and seriousness to the role after a decade (or more) of increasing ridiculousness. Dalton followed a 58-year old quipping dandy in Moore, and Craig followed an invisible car. The difference being- for whatever reason- the audience wasn’t ready for the franchise to take the turn Dalton offered. We were by the time Craig came along.
I think the two Dalton entries are vastly underrated, with “Licence to Kill” being my favourite. It’s a Bond who at once seems to be just a regular guy (the Felix Leiter wedding showed he actually had friends) but in an instant can turn right back into a cold-blooded killing machine (perhaps M would say “a blunt tool”). When he comes in and discovers Della Leiter dead and Felix mangled by the shark (“He disagreed with something that ate him”), Dalton plays that completely right; shocked and horrified, immediately followed by fury and vengeance. I also enjoyed David Hedison as Felix Leiter and an early glimpse at the career of Benecio Del Toro.
Robert Davi was a great villain and his death was a satisfying pay-off.
Would have been interesting to see what might have happened had there not been the studio problems after “Licence to Kill”. By the time it was all done and dusted, six years had gone by and Dalton (now 49 or 51) and Eon decided to part ways. Dalton was then what we see Craig to be now.
Dalton is still my favorite Bond, and *License to Kill *my favorite Bond film, for reasons well discussed up-thread. I remember watching Flash Gordon (in theatrical release) and thinking, “This dude would make a great Bond some day!”