Franz Sanchez is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond

James Bond

James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 film Licence to Kill

Licence to Kill

Licence to Kill, released in 1989, is the sixteenth entry in the Eon Productions James Bond series and the first one not to use the title of an Ian Fleming novel. It marks Timothy Dalton's second and final performance in his brief tenure in the lead role of James Bond...

. He was played by Robert Davi

Robert Davi

Robert John Davi is an American actor and singer. He has played such roles as Vietnam veteran and Special Agent Johnson in Die Hard, the villainous Jake Fratelli in The Goonies, and Al Torres in Showgirls...

. The character is based on Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and rich and successful criminal. He owned numerous luxury residences, automobiles, and even airplanes...

. Davi spent weeks studying Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

n culture and music before taking on the role.

Character

Sanchez is a South American drug lord

Drug lord

A drug lord, drug baron or kingpin is the term used to describe a person who controls a sizable network of persons involved in the illegal drugs trade. Such figures are often difficult to bring to justice, as they might never be directly in possession of something illegal, but are insulated from...

 of mixed parentage (as his first name indicates, one of his parents was German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

) whose empire is based in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. He specialises in cocaine

Cocaine

Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

. He has an elaborate infrastructure for transporting his drugs - initially using submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s 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

Green Iguana

The Green Iguana or Common Iguana is a large, arboreal herbivorous species of lizard of the genus Iguana native to Central and South America...

 with a diamond

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

 collar, which perches on its master (in a manner similar to Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character and a supervillain from the James Bond series of novels and films, who was created by Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory. An evil genius with aspirations of world domination, he is the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond and is arguably...

's cat). He is uncommonly brutal in dealing with those he perceives as disloyal to him; Sanchez brutally whips his girlfriend, Lupe Lamora, with a stingray

Stingray

The stingrays are a group of rays, which are cartilaginous fishes related to sharks. They are classified in the suborder Myliobatoidei of the order Myliobatiformes, and consist of eight families: Hexatrygonidae , Plesiobatidae , Urolophidae , Urotrygonidae , Dasyatidae , Potamotrygonidae The...

-tail whip as a punishment for infidelity. It is also implied that under his orders his henchmen remove the heart of a man she has slept with.
In Licence to Kill, Sanchez is pursued by Bond's old friend Felix Leiter

Felix Leiter

Felix Leiter is a fictional CIA agent created by Ian Fleming in the James Bond series of novels and films. In both, Leiter works for the CIA and assists Bond in his various adventures as well as being his best friend. In further novels Leiter joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency and in the film...

, a former CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 operative who is working for the DEA

Drug Enforcement Administration

The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...

. 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 on his wedding night. His henchmen invade the Leiter house, kidnapping Leiter and raping

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

 and killing his new wife, Della. Sanchez then feeds Leiter to a shark- which devours Leiter's right leg below the knee and badly wounds his arm, although doctors speculated that they could save it- and returns him to his home with a warning note: "He disagreed with something that ate him". (This is based on a plot development in Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

's novel Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die (novel)

Live and Let Die is the second novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1954, where the initial print run of 7,500 copies quickly sold out. As with Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale, Live and Let Die was broadly well received by the critics...

.)

M

M (James Bond)

M is a fictional character in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, as well as the films in the Bond franchise. The head of MI6 and Bond's superior, M has been portrayed by three actors in the official Bond film series: Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and since 1995 by Judi Dench. Background =Ian Fleming...

 orders Bond to back away from the case; Bond promptly resigns from MI6 and pursues Sanchez to Isthmus City seeking revenge, infiltrates Sanchez's organisation in order to destroy it, presenting himself as a renegade ex-agent and providing Sanchez with false information that other members of his organisation have turned against him, simultaneously providing alibis for his own attempts on Sanchez's life and prompting Sanchez to take out his own men.

Although Bond's true agenda is exposed while he is visiting one of Sanchez's underground facilities, he is still about to set the complex on fire and, when Sanchez attempts to escape with a convoy of his Maserati

Maserati

Maserati is an Italian luxury car manufacturer established on December 1, 1914, in Bologna. The company's headquarters is now in Modena, and its emblem is a trident. It has been owned by the Italian car giant Fiat S.p.A. since 1993...

 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

Machete

The machete is a large cleaver-like cutting tool. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known...

, Bond sets him on fire (using a cigar lighter

Lighter

A lighter is a portable device used to generate a flame. It consists of a metal or plastic container filled with a flammable fluid or pressurized liquid gas, a means of ignition, and some provision for extinguishing the flame.- History :...

 Leiter had given to him at the beginning of the film, providing Sanchez with the missing information about Bond's reasons for going after him in the first place), and Sanchez stumbles in agony into the wreck, dying in the resulting explosion.

Henchmen

• Dario
• Perez
• Milton Krest
• Truman-Lodge
• Braun
• Joe Butcher
• Colonel Heller
• Ed Killifer