Written by Mr. Mouseburger 4th Jun 2005
Stunts galore have decimated all but one of the petrol tankers (which had a petro-cocaine mix in them). Bond and Sanchez are fighting over the last moving tanker, when Bond manages to turn it off of the road and down a medium sized incline. This is enough to knock the two of them off, and both are stunned at the bottom of the incline.
Sanchez is the first to recover, and holds the machete to Bonds head, preparing to execute him. Bond buys some time by explaining that his vengeance is due to Sanchez killing his friend, CIA agent Felix Lighter. He shows Sanchez the lighter Felix gave him. Sanchez, covered in petrol, seems to be the last person to realise that this item is in fact a really dangerous combination, and really should not have had that look of surprise on his face when Bond lights the lighter and sets him aflame.
Anyone that stupid deserves to go up in smoke. Also, how anyone that stupid could have masterminded a highly sophisticated multi-million pound drug operation remains a mystery.
Actually, Felix doesn't die in this film. It is Felix's new wife who gets killed in the film, just a few hours after getting married. Felix winds up losing his legs at the hands of Sanchez, but he is very much alive at the end of the film.
Indeed, I didn't notice it in the writeup before, but you should have said Sanchez "maimed" his friend.
By the way, I don't think Sanchez was that stupid. Bond whipped out his lighter too quick for Sanchez to react! (or maybe not, but it was necessary towards the emotional factor of the death to suspend disbelief in this case.)
In addition to the aboe, isn't this a classic case of Revenge?
Admittedly, Bond does flash Sanchez the inscription on the lighter. That would have gave him more than enough time to react.
Sanchez seemed to go along with Dario's conclusion: "He's an informer!" So up until this point, he regarded Bond as an undercover cop. A really tenacious, annoying one, but nothing to get too riled up about.
But then as he's poised to kill him, and Bond asks, "Don't you want to know why?" Sanchez pauses, as if thinking, "Yeah, I would like to know why, now that he mentions it. If he's not a cop, what is he?"
And then when Bond shows him the lighter, with its inscription, it's going through Sanchez's head and finally dawning on him that this is all because he fed "the Leiter guy" to the shark, and I think it hits him like an anvil, making him slow to react, which costs him.