Alright so coming at Bond film number 8 we see the joys of Connery's Bond end with Roger Moore who has the most films in his pocket as Bond. Yes this guy even surpassed Sean Connery's Bond with most films. It's okay, I find that hard to believe too. So starting off with Moore's days as James Bond, is Live and Let Die.
Plot: After three British Agents are killed in New York, New Orleans and San Monique, M assigns Bond to all three of these places and find out if there is a connection to their deaths. During his travels he comes across a ruthless gangster named Mr. Big and his psychic Solitaire. Mr. Big plans to bankrupt his competitors in the poppy business and use Solitaire's powers of seeing the future to secure his plans. And of coarse it's up to Bond to stop him while also taking an interest in Solitaire despite the fact that she will lose her powers if she sleeps with a man.
Okay while this wasn't the worst movie to start off in replacing Connery, it's still a movie that's kind of just a little meh and nothing else. The main good things about this film is the action, the boat chase more or less, the main song Live and Let Die is a little memorable and is little surprise that it was at least nominated for best original song, and Solitaire was a good Bond girl for the most part. But the rest of the film surprisingly focuses a fair bit on racial overtones and having some okay humor, and some effects during the end that are kind of...weird. Because with villains, they were pretty much all black, and some of them did play into some kind of stereotypes that I found to be surprising that they were taking those characters into that direction. With the boat chase scene, a good portion of the chase was a police sheriff tried to stop and arrest Bond and the people chasing him as the comedic relief. He wasn't annoying, but he wasn't all that funny and he helped make the scene a lot longer then it probably needed to be - so much in fact that some critic Leonard Maltin thought the film was ultimately an excuse just to have chase sequences like the boat chase. And during the very end of the film, while it did show us some new gadgets (something that seems to be easily a plus to have considering some of the films I've seen so far) some of the effects that they had for them during the end of the film where - again, weird. I'm not how to explain it better, but ultimately the effects where just unexpected because they're not the kind that you'd expect or really should be in a Bond movie. But I digress. With Moore as Bond he was...not that impressive. He had some little moments here and there, but ultimately he started off in this film and not really living up to the concept of the character James Bond. Also the villains weren't all that menacing or memorable except perhaps with Tee Hee Johnson.
And that's my review for Live and Let Die. The action and the Bond girl were good, but it otherwise had some racial stereotypes, a chase scene that was good but was a little too long, humor that wasn't all that amusing, odd effects, and a Bond that is not off to a great start. So was there any improvement to this particular Bond as his reign continued? Let's find out with the next few films.
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