Anthony Starke’s Truman-Lodge is a deceptively minor figure in Licence to Kill, yet he leaves a distinct impression. As Franz Sanchez’s tightly wound financial advisor and overseer of his so-called private investment fund, Truman-Lodge is deeply embedded in the infrastructure of the villain’s drug empire. He manages the Joe Butcher fundraiser, conducts investor tours, and provides rare insight into the economic machinery behind Sanchez’s operation, notably revealing the $32 million cost of the cocaine processing facility Bond destroys.

Starke plays him with a nervy, coked-up intensity that borders on obsessive. His fixation on pricing and profit margins, including his rambling heroin valuation speech, paints him as a man who is both dependent on and consumed by the very enterprise he helps sustain. Even Sanchez seems amused by him at times, a dynamic that makes his eventual execution more telling than shocking. In a movie defined by loyalty and betrayal, Truman-Lodge’s fate underscores a simple truth about Sanchez’s world: usefulness has an expiration date.