Vivre et laisser mourir

After all the physical stuff with Sean Connery, Roger Moore will always be the true James Bond to me. Understated humour and a lot of Britishness. I love it. And, needless to say, Jane Seymour is positively enchanting.

I first saw this in the early 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently. This is the eighth film in the Bond series and the first to star Roger Moore as James Bond. Here 007 is sent to New York to investigate the deaths of three British agents, leading him to Kananga n Mr. Big, thereby trapping him in a world of gangsters, dictator, drug traffickers and voodoo occultists.

Here Bond faces Dr. Kananga, Baron Samedi (a paranormal entity), ferocious crocodiles, a venomous snake, Tee Hee, a henchman who has a pincer for a hand, Dambala, a henchman with a penchant for snakes and wears a goat pelt on his head, Whisper, a fatty who cannot speak properly and various henchmen in red tshirts and blue pants.

Bond gets to cool off with Madeline Smith, Jane Seymour and Gloria Hendry, a babe with an amazing toned obliques n rectus abdominis.

The film has a lovely boat chase which is amazingly well photographed in Louisiana around the Irish Bayou. I am a big fan of movies shot in the marshy areas n the bayou of Louisiana.

In the novel, Tee Hee is a henchman without the metal claw and he breaks the little finger of Bond's left hand.

In the novel, Whisper's quiet voice is attributed to a bout of tuberculosis during infancy.

Although I have always regarded Sean Connery as the best of the actors to play Bond, I have never (unlike some Connery diehards) regarded the casting of Roger Moore as his successor as a mistake. Moore brought a different interpretation to the role, one which owed something to parts he had played in two adventure series on television, Simon Templar in "The Saint" and Brett Sinclair in "The Persuaders". Whereas Connery's tough, gritty Bond allowed something of the hard man below the surface to show through, Moore played the character much more as a suave, sophisticated English gentleman. (Connery's Bond, like the actor himself, was definitely Scottish).

The villain of "Live and Let Die" is Kananga, the leader of the small Caribbean island of San Monique. (Shouldn't that be Sainte Monique?) For a Bond villain, Kananga's ambitions are surprisingly limited, with no scheme for world domination. He has, however, close links to the New York underworld, and has hatched a plot to flood the American market with heroin. Kananga is deeply superstitious, and employs the services of Solitaire, a beautiful young woman with the power to foretell the future through the use of tarot cards. As with a number of the other films, much of the plot of this one revolves around Bond's ability to win over the villain's female accomplice.

The Bond films, of course, are all dependent upon a stylised formula involving adventure (especially chase sequences), exotic locations, beautiful women, evil villains, memorable music and a generous (but preferably not too generous) helping of humour. When all the elements of the formula come together, the result can be a highly enjoyable piece of entertainment. "Live and Let Die" has, by and large, got most of the elements right. Its main asset is the lovely Jane Seymour, one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most talented of the Bond Girls, as Solitaire. She was one of the youngest of the Bond Girls, being only 22 a the time the film was made (Honor Blackman and Maud Adams, for example, were both in their late thirties when they starred in a Bond film), but despite her lack of experience turns in a very good performance. Her Solitaire is not a strong action heroine like Pussy Galore or Anya Amasova, but a passive figure, melancholy and fatalistic, troubled by her psychic powers but at the same time frightened of losing them. As such she has rather more depth than the average Bond heroine.

Roger Moore is also good in this film; in 1973 he was still clearly youthful enough to be convincing in the role and makes the most of it. As the villainous Kananga Yaphet Kotto is adequate, but he does rather suffer the fate of being outshone by the two secondary villains, his henchman Tee Hee (the man with the metal arm and claw for a hand ) and Baron Samedi with his demonic peals of laughter. (Curt Jurgens suffered a similar fate in "The Spy who Loved Me", where Richard Kiel's Jaws turned out to be more memorable than his own Stromberg). There are some exciting chase sequences, particularly the one in the old bus across San Monique, and the waterborne one through the Louisiana bayous. I didn't much care for the character of J W Pepper, a rather stupid redneck Louisiana sheriff with a thick Deep South accent who was obviously intended as the film's main comic relief. (He makes another appearance in "The Man with the Golden Gun"). Nevertheless, there was some successful use of sardonic humour, such as the scene where a man, watching a traditional New Orleans jazz funereal, asks "Whose funeral is it?" and is told "Yours" immediately before being stabbed to death. The music was also good, especially Paul McCartney's brilliant theme song. My overall view is that this is, together with "For Your Eyes Only", the best of the Roger Moore Bond films. 7/10

And none the worse for it, since every Bond film needs a fresh spin on the same old formula. Roger Moore's first outing as JB is, in equal measures, comical and action-packed. You'll never get bored. But it's definitely the weirdest Bond ever with loads of utterly bizarre moments.

It begins with M turning up at JB's house in the early hours while he's pumping some Italian agent for information (don't you just love his initialled dressing gown). Before sending him to America to investigate a Harlem pimp known as Mister Big he delivers some gadgets from Q-Branch, including a very useful watch. Q himself, or Major Boothroyd if you want to call him by his proper name, doesn't make any appearance in this one.

Standing out like a Muslim in an airport, almost every single black person JB encounters in Harlem is on Mister Big's payroll. And they've got a seemingly endless bag of tricks to play on him. The funny thing about Moore is that he's very proper and British and doesn't think anything of walking into a tough Harlem bar while dressed up like the Duke of Edinburgh. His stunned reactions when they mess with his head are seriously funny.

The action then moves to Lousiana and a savage Caribbean island as JB uncovers a massive heroin plot. There's a particularly long speedboat chase across a bayou where JB encounters Sheriff J.W. Pepper, the most stereotypical southern redneck ever. Think of Texas Businessman from The Simpsons and you get the idea. JB also gets to dodge a hundred hungry Gators and do, many times over, Solitaire, Mister Big's Tarot card reader.

I'm not sure what kind of formidable villain uses a Tarot card reader to help him do business but when you also surround yourself with a hook-handed maniac called Tee-Hee, a quiet fat guy called Whisper and a seemingly unkillable voodoo high priest called Baron Samedi then you really do become a serious baddie. Right? He even goes on a big speech about how his master plan works before attempting to kill JB slowly. Obviously this makes much more sense than just shooting him right away. When will they learn?

Despite being the oldest actor to debut as Bond (at 46), Moore does look younger than Connery. And while Sean was gruff and Scottish, Moore is perpetually calm and refined, even in the face of danger (fingers being chopped-off, snake in the bath, being eaten by gators/sharks). Everything that the British once thought they were. He has a certain sarcastic edge that the other Bond actors lacked. While some of his films may have been the sillier of the franchise, Moore has always been my favorite. And the massive revolver and holster he uses at the end is so much more masculine than the usual, wimpy as hell, Walther PPK.

And, as much as I am no fan of Paul McCartney, you gotta love that theme song! Exciting and iconic at the same time. And also yet another juxtaposition in the weirdest Bond movie ever.

MI6, Harlem, Pimps, Paul McCartney, Gators, Heroin, Voodoo, Snakes, Sharks, Clairvoyance, Rednecks, Afros, Fake Afros, Fillet of Soul, Human Scarifice, Scarecrows and a small-headed man in a Top-Hat who lost a fight with chickens. Is this a Bond film or did the whole world just go insane?

Several British agents are killed in America and in the Caribbean. Despite the difference in how the murders occur they seem linked together by drugs. Bond begins to investigate and finds links between the American drug dealer Mr Big and the mysterious owner of a Caribbean island Kananga. While investigating Bond falls foul of both despite gaining the affections of Kananga's beautiful mistress Solitaire.

Roger Moore's first Bond is one of his best. The film wisely steps away from those regular bad guys the Russians and gets a new feel by actually having non-white main characters. The plot is pretty good and doesn't have the usual `take over the world' feel to it. There is plenty of silly stuff of course but the stunts are quite good and Bond has a new line in `eyebrow raised' humour.

Moore will never be the best Bond but he did make the role his own – adding an element of self-deprecating humour to the role. Yaphet Kotto is a good actor and makes a good bad guy. Jane Seymour isn't convincing as the mystic property of Kananga – she really should have been played by a black actress and it shows a lack of bravery on the side of the producers that they went with a white face as the lead Bond girl. Julius Harris is good as Tee Hee and Clifton James adds some comedy value as J.W. Pepper.

Overall this is one of Moore's best Bond movies and certainly stands out from previous films with numerous Russian baddies. Also the theme music is a really fun song from Wings.