SimonJack "Live and Let Die is the first James Bond film that starred Roger Moore in the lead role as Agent 007. Like Sean Connery before him, Moore would make seven Bond films. His would be over a 13-year period, with one other star before his last film. That, incidentally, was Connery 12 years after his sixth appearance in the role. One thing interesting about the Bond series is that each actor who has had the role four or more times has started with high ratings, and by the time of their last films, their ratings have reached their lowest point. The box office results also reflect this. All of the films continue to make good at the box office, but the later ones of each lead actor have less spectacular rates of return. It just seems that audiences get tired of the same actor as Bond after a while. In this film, Moore showed that he would be likely to stay in the role. He is a capable Bond in all aspects. His physical challenges aren't as many or spectacular as in the earliest films. But his cunning and alertness are quite sharp. This film mixes a little exotic Caribbean travel with visits to the U.S. First, New York, and then New Orleans and the bayous of Louisiana. A big chunk of the story was filmed in the latter and in Jamaica. For excitement, this movie has the best boat chase episode of any film I can recall. It lasts a long time, involves several boats, and has some fantastic scenes. These include boats shooting across patches of land, jumping barriers, crashing through a boat block, and crashing and exploding. All of the cast are very good. After this film, Jane Seymour became widely known and her star rose fast. Most Bond films have one bad guy character who stands out for something special about her or him - size, mechanical body parts, strength, etc. In this film, it's Julius Harris as Tee Hee. He is both very tall and has a metal claw hand - or clamp hand. However, he turns out not to be so tough as other Bond opponents have been in the past. The characteristic unusual encounter of a Bond film in "Live and Let Die" is with a congregation of alligators and crocodiles. The IMDb filming locations lists Jamaica Safari Village for shooting of the crocodile farm scenes. Jamaica has native crocs but not alligators, and Louisiana has alligators but not crocs. The scenes clearly seem to show both reptiles. My guess is that the tourist village in Jamaica also has some alligators in captivity, along with the native crocs. A bunch of snakes of various types also got in on the action of this film. This film shows a strange and interesting aspect of culture in some of the Caribbean islands. Early Spanish explorers and settlers brought the Catholic religion to the islands. Christianity clearly is against superstition and occult practices. Yet, some places where voodoo had existed before retained its beliefs and practices, mixing them in with their Christianity. The scenario of the voodoo ceremony has a scene when Tee Hee appears to rise from a grave. The many people are on their knees and rapidly and repeatedly crossing themselves. One very strange thing in this film was the funeral parade in the French Quarter of New Orleans. In both instances when the two separate events are shown, the streets otherwise are empty of people except for the throng in the parade and a secret agent and an assailant. I can't imagine any day when there wouldn't be many people seen on the streets of the Quarter. The plot for this film has some holes or blanks. We never learn why the British ambassador to the U.N. is killed in the beginning. The ending is also unusual and odd. Most Bond films end with the good guys defeating or rounding up the bad guys. But nothing is shown of the dozens of men and women in New Orleans who staged the funeral parades to cover murders. There were many folks involved in the crimes in this film that seem to get away with murder. These are just some of the different aspects of this Bond film. The curious treatment of some things, or lack thereof, make it seem that the filmmakers were running out of time or money and needed to tighten up the script. The end result was little pieces being removed that answered the questions and tied it all together logically. But for those glaring miscues or oversights, this film would have scored nine stars in my rating. Here are a couple of favorite lines from the film.James Bond, "A sort of junkie's welfare system."Kananga, "That heroin will be very expensive, indeed, leaving myself and the phone company the only two growing monopolies in the nation for years to come."

Movie_Muse_Reviews "Live and Let Die" is one of the more deceiving "James Bond" films. The face of the franchise may have changed with Roger Moore assuming the mantle of 007, but everything below the neck is fairly familiar. So what seems like a reboot is more like a facelift, albeit a needed one.Moore comes to the role of Bond with an energy that Connery clearly lacked by the end of his tenure, despite Moore being in his forties (and three years older than Connery period) when beginning what would become a seven-film run. He definitely feels like an "elder statesman" Bond, with his charm and cunning his greatest assets. Nevertheless, he seems excited to slide into the familiar "Bond" scenarios and dialogue and make them his own.These "Bond" elements are familiar because of the return of "Diamonds are Forever" writer Tom Mankiewicz and director Guy Hamilton. That film was a disaster in many respects, so the fact that "Live and Let Die" is an improvement is no small feat. (Then again, Hamilton did helm "Goldfinger," so who knows?) Like "Diamonds," the story keeps Bond predominantly on American soil after a few British agents are compromised in New York City, New Orleans and the fictional island of San Monique. The connection between them all is the superstitious crime syndicate leader and heroine kingpin Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto) and his lackeys Tee Hee (Julius Harris), Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) and tarot card reader Solitaire (Jane Seymour).The film's release during the era of Blaxploitation films in cinema makes the black villain and various other black characters particularly interesting to say the absolute least. On the one hand, the film features black actors in key roles in an action franchise that in many ways couldn't be whiter. On the other, almost all the black characters are sinister, and Bond heads off into the sunset with the doe-eyed fair-skinned British lady who is clearly out of place, even if she's engaging to watch. At least Bond doesn't go blackface, i.e. this film avoids the social misfire of "You Only Live Twice."Regardless of how the black cultural and voodoo cultural elements were handled, they certainly make "Live and Let Die" a more memorable "Bond." The jazz funeral/second line sequences are unforgettably brilliant, the night club trick tables are pretty clever too and Bond's crocodile escape is surprisingly harrowing given the legitimate stuntwork. And while Q may be absent, the magnet watch features prominently and creatively throughout the film. These touches are truly what make "Bond" films memorable and fun and there's more hits than misses, unlike Mankiewicz's work on "Diamonds.""Live and Let Die" is probably a masterpiece compared to "Diamonds," but objectively, it's merely a good "Bond" entry and a necessary course-correction. The film relies way too much on formula, with predictable chase sequences involving unusual vehicles and a last-second plot to kill James in the epilogue, to name examples. "LALD" has Bond operating a propeller plane, double-decker bus and a speedboat (one of the lengthiest and most tiresome "Bond" chases with barely enough payoff). Hamilton continues his preferred style of filming all these sequences with slapstick in mind rather than making them feel dangerous or suspenseful. Then there's the film's J.W. Pepper problem — the unnecessary caricature of a Louisiana sheriff is worth knocking the whole film down a peg.Anchoring "Live and Let Die" is Paul and Linda McCartney's title track, which one-off "Bond" composer George Martin wisely builds into the film's score at some needed moments. A mostly uptempo rock song, it's uniqueness helps accent the many ways in which "Live and Let Die" stands out among the "Bond" canon, in spite the many ways it still heeds to formula and shares qualities with some of its lesser "Bond" peers.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

stormhawk2018 I fell in love with this bond entry right from the start. Roger Moore kicks it up a notch in this new take on the James Bond character, making his this over-the-top action star, with a lot of wit. The action spread throughout this film is fantastic, especially a very memorable chase in the river, but by the end of the film, you just can't help but wonder why they took so much time on the action, before getting back to a forgotten storyline. Also, there are some very odd ritual scenes in which I wondered why they included, but still, I had a terrific time during my viewing of this film and the direction and editing has gotten much much better. "Live and Let Die" is a fine entry to the bond canon.

Maynard Handley This is a truly amazing movie to watch in the year of Trump, and compare to the year it was made, 1973 so 43 years ago. I can't imagine that everyone involved had an explicit political message; rather they were just channeling the times. But damn, what times they were channeling. Every stereotype of "the other" you can imagine is here, and proudly displayed. Black men do, in fact, form a single organized cabal. They are intent on poisoning "us" all. They want to steal and deflower "our" women. They believe in strange savage cults and engage in ghastly rituals. Hell, in the last mass ritual scene I half expected the boiling pot to come out and a cannibalism trope to join everything else we'd seen so far. It's a weird weird mix --- think James Bond meets the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with the word Jew find-and-replaced with Black. You have to see it to believe it.Oh, and of course the usual Bond formula is well established by now. We have the gadgets, the multiple different types of chases and fights, the underground lair, the stupid evil genius who cannot shut up about his evil plans and never just shoots his enemy the moment he see him. We even have the first prototype of that canonical Roger Moore James Bond villain, Jaws!If you're going to see just one early Bond movie, make it this one; if for no other reason than to see how much has changed (and how much hasn't) over forty+ years.