Live and Let Die (1973)

Moore Arrives

Live and Let Die is Roger Moore’s first Bond film, and it’s an odd, uneven, very entertaining introduction. Sean Connery had come back for one last film, Diamonds Are Forever, and gone again, and the producers needed a new Bond who wouldn’t simply be compared to him. They found Moore, a television star from The Saint, and deliberately built a film that looked nothing like the Connery years: no Blofeld, no Cold War, no Q, no gadget car and no dinner jacket in the first scene.

Guy Hamilton, who had directed Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever, directed it, and Tom Mankiewicz wrote the script, loosely based on Ian Fleming’s second novel. It came out in 1973, made a great deal of money, and established Moore firmly in the role. I give it a 7. It’s fun, it has two of the best stunts in the series and the best theme song, and it has problems that have become harder to ignore with every passing year.

A Different Kind of Bond

Moore’s Bond is lighter, wittier and more relaxed than Connery’s. He smokes cigars instead of cigarettes, drinks bourbon instead of vodka martinis in several scenes, and treats most dangers with raised eyebrows and a quip. The producers were careful to avoid anything that would invite direct comparison, and the strategy worked. Audiences accepted Moore as a different Bond from the first reel.

The problem, visible even here, is that Moore’s Bond rarely seems in real danger. He’s a gentleman amused by the situation, and the film is so busy being fun that it forgets to be tense. It’s the start of the lighter, more comic tone that would define the next decade of the series, for better and worse, and you can see both the charm and the weakness forming.

Moore is very good at what he does here, and he’s more convincing in the action than people remember. He was forty-five, older than Connery had been in any of his official Bonds, and he makes the role his own immediately. By the end of the film, the question of whether anyone could follow Connery had been answered, and Moore would go on to play Bond for twelve years and seven films.

The Plot

Three British agents are murdered in quick succession, in New York, New Orleans and the Caribbean island of San Monique, and Bond is sent to find out why. The trail leads to Dr. Kananga, the dictator of San Monique, and to Mr. Big, a gangster who runs a chain of soul food restaurants in Harlem.

They turn out to be the same man. Kananga is growing enormous poppy fields on his island, protected by fear of voodoo, and he plans to give away two tons of heroin free through Mr. Big’s restaurants, flooding the American market, putting the Mafia out of business and creating a vast new population of addicts who will then have to buy from him alone.

It’s one of the more grounded plots in the series, a drug lord’s business plan, not a scheme to hold the world to ransom, and it gives the film a different, grittier texture. Yaphet Kotto plays Kananga with real intelligence and menace, and he’s a much better villain than the film around him deserves.

Solitaire

Jane Seymour plays Solitaire, Kananga’s fortune teller, a young woman who can see the future in tarot cards as long as she remains a virgin. Kananga relies on her readings for everything, and she’s kept a prisoner in his palace, in white robes and elaborate headdresses.

Bond wins her by stacking a tarot deck so that every card she draws is The Lovers. It’s a clever trick and, looked at now, a rather manipulative way to seduce a frightened young woman. Once she sleeps with him, she loses her power, and her life is in danger from Kananga. Seymour was twenty-two, in her first major film role, and she gives Solitaire a fragility and dignity the script doesn’t always give her.

She’s also one of the few Bond women whose power is mysterious. The film never quite explains whether she really sees the future, and her readings are right often enough to be unsettling. The tarot cards appear throughout the film, and the production commissioned its own deck. It became a collector’s item. It’s one of the few eerie touches in the series.

The Crocodile Farm

Captured by Kananga’s men, Bond is left stranded on a tiny island in the middle of a pond full of crocodiles at a farm in the Louisiana bayous. He escapes by running across the backs of a row of crocodiles to the shore, and the stunt was real.

It was performed by Ross Kananga, the owner of the crocodile farm where it was filmed, whose surname the filmmakers liked so much they gave it to the villain. He reportedly made several attempts, and was bitten on at least one of them. The shot in the finished film shows him running across the animals, and few stunts in the whole series match it.

It’s also typical of the Moore era at its best: a simple, ridiculous, completely real piece of danger, filmed without cheating, that no amount of computer effects could match. Watching it now, knowing that the man on screen is really running across the backs of living crocodiles, is still enough to make you hold your breath, and it’s the one image from the film that everyone remembers.

The Boat Chase

Bond steals a speedboat and is chased through the bayous by Kananga’s men and by the local sheriff, and the sequence is one of the longest and most elaborate chases in any Bond film. Boats race through narrow channels, cut across lawns, crash through a wedding party and, in one famous stunt, leap across a road and over a police car.

The jump was designed to go a modest distance and went much further, setting a record for a boat jump at the time. It’s an exciting sequence, and much of it was done for real on the water, with stunt drivers taking enormous risks. It still looks spectacular.

It’s also where the film introduces Sheriff J.W. Pepper, played by Clifton James, a loud, tobacco-chewing Louisiana lawman who becomes the comic relief of the chase. Audiences loved him, and he returned in The Man with the Golden Gun. He’s a broad caricature, and your tolerance for him will vary.

The Theme Song

Paul McCartney and Wings recorded the theme, and it’s arguably the best Bond song ever written. It starts as a gentle ballad, explodes into a thunderous orchestral rock section and swings into a reggae interlude, and it captures the film’s mix of danger and fun perfectly. It was nominated for the Oscar and has been a concert staple ever since.

George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, produced the song and wrote the score, the first Bond film not scored by John Barry since Dr. No. Martin’s score is solid, blending the Bond theme with funk and Caribbean rhythms, and it gives the film a sound unlike any Bond before it.

Baron Samedi and Tee Hee

Two of Kananga’s henchmen are among the most memorable in the series. Tee Hee, played by Julius Harris, is a giant, always-smiling man with a metal claw in place of the arm a crocodile took. His fight with Bond on a train at the end is a fine bruising brawl, and his claw is one of the great henchman gimmicks.

Baron Samedi, played by Geoffrey Holder, is the voodoo spirit of death, or a man playing him, or something in between. Holder was a dancer, choreographer and actor, and he gives Samedi a towering, laughing presence. The film never settles whether he’s supernatural, and his final appearance, laughing on the front of a train after apparently being killed, leaves the question open.

The Stereotypes

Live and Let Die borrows heavily from the blaxploitation films that were popular in 1973, like Shaft and Superfly, and it does so in ways that were uncomfortable then and are worse now. Almost every Black character in the film is a villain, a henchman or a voodoo worshipper. Harlem is presented as a menacing, alien place where a white man is conspicuous and in danger. The voodoo scenes treat a real religion as a horror prop.

It’s the film’s biggest problem, and it should be said plainly. It’s not simply dated. It builds its sense of danger out of racial fear, and a modern audience feels it immediately. Yaphet Kotto and Gloria Hendry, as the double agent Rosie Carver, the first Black woman to be romantically involved with Bond, do what they can with their roles, and Kotto in particular brings real dignity to a part that could easily have been a caricature.

None of this means the film can’t be enjoyed. It means it should be watched with open eyes, as a film of its moment that got a great deal wrong about the people it depicted. Knowing what it gets wrong makes it possible to appreciate what it gets right, including Kotto’s performance and some of the best action filmmaking in the Moore era.

The Ending

Bond destroys the poppy fields, rescues Solitaire from a voodoo sacrifice and confronts Kananga in his underground lair, where both men end up in a shark tank. Bond forces a compressed gas pellet, meant for killing sharks, into Kananga’s mouth, and Kananga inflates like a balloon and explodes.

It’s among the silliest villain deaths in the series, and it undercuts Kotto’s fine performance badly. It’s typical of the tone the Moore era would take: when in doubt, go for the joke. Then Tee Hee attacks on the train home, and Baron Samedi laughs from the front of the engine, and the film ends on a note of uncanny mystery.

Where Live and Let Die Falls Short

The stereotypes, above all, and the tone. It lurches between grit and slapstick. Sheriff Pepper is funny for a while and outstays his welcome, and Kananga’s death is ridiculous. Moore’s Bond, charming as he is, rarely seems to be in danger, and without danger the action scenes can feel like stunts performed for their own sake. The film also runs a little long, and the middle sags between the big set pieces.

On the other side of the ledger: the theme song, the crocodile run, the boat chase, Kotto, Seymour and Geoffrey Holder. It’s a 7. It’s a fun, flawed introduction to Moore, and it’s more memorable than several of the more polished films that followed it. If you’re working through the Moore era, start here, then jump to The Spy Who Loved Me. It is where his Bond finally found its full form.

Craft Note

The Verdict on Live and Let Die

Yes, with open eyes. It’s a 7. It has the best theme song in the series, two of its best stunts and a strong villain in Yaphet Kotto, and it has racial stereotypes that are hard to watch now. That’s a fun, flawed introduction to Roger Moore.

Frequently Asked Questions