Roger Moore by Michael Fairbanks
Tenure as Bond: 7 movies
Essential Adventure: Live and Let Die (1973)
In 2006, as ten year old Michael ran through the lexicon of Bond films on his way to the release of Casino Royale, he developed something of a soft spot for the outings of Sir Roger Moore. Sure the Sean Connery films were a bit more sophisticated and high stakes, and the Brosnan ones a touch more cartoonish, but it was within the quirky and often comedic middle chapters that my imagination was most lit up. This is in no small part due to Moore’s criminally under-sold performance as 007. While arguably the longest running Bond (Connery’s seventh outing was somewhat un-official), portraying the character a nearly insane seven times, he often gets tossed aside in favor of Connery or Craig. With that said, I hadn’t touched a Moore Bond flick since that young age, so as I popped in Live and Let Die today, I had all the chance in the world of being let down. What I got was a movie much, much weirder than I could have dreamed of remembering, but a Bond that is still worth cherishing.
This is a Bond so refined and debonaire that he dosen’t need any form of grand introduction to immediately convince us of just who he is. While his Bond is certainly one unafraid to kill, Moore’s is the ladies man above all else. We find him in bed with his first of three women, and his sexually charged, cigar chomping British attitude makes it clear that these are three of many more. For Moore, being a secret agent is something that gives him great pleasure, his obstacles mere annoyances worthy of puns at worst. This goofy energy is absolutely infectious, as Moore dials up these qualities in a way that dosen’t feel cheesy or goofy, but just enough so that every line out of his mouth is fun. There’s a reason that characters such as Colin Firth’s Harry Hart in Kingsman are so heavily drawn from this James Bond, because in many ways, it’s the most refined and entertaining take on the character to date.
Frankly, I did not know what to expect out of Live and Let Die after all these years. My memory of it was merely that I enjoyed it about as much as The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, which are widely considered to be the two best Moore-era films. As such, I was not quite prepared for what I was getting into. Holy hell, Live and Let Die is a weird, weird film. Sure, it’s borderline adorable in just how deliriously goofy it is, but it truly is a product of it’s time in that there is no way in hell any Bond film like it would get past the treatment today. This movie essentially chucks Mr. Bond into a blacksploitation film. Set mostly in Harlem and New Orleans, James takes on the swamp filled, street ripped world of Cajun superstition, in other words, nothing even remotely close to what had been done before. As such, we have moments where perhaps the classiest Bond is running on top of the head of alligators, manipulating gypsy women to have sex with him using terot cards, and inflating people up like balloons. It’s a film that actually has the line, “For $20, I’ll drive you to a KKK cookout,” which is one of the many moments that really drives home how much Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman seemed to not care exactly what was in a Bond film, as long as the spy himself was in the title. All of that said, there are a great deal of entertaining set-pieces, most notably a speed boat chase that runs about 20 minutes long through the bayous of New Orleans, and it does ultimately work as an establishment of one of the most iconic James Bonds of all time.
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