Like a big breath of fresh air, with a new Bond and a kick ass title song from Paul and Linda McCartney, Live and Let Die was just what the Bond series needed. The filmmakers also make the wise decision to take the series in new directions and break free from Connery's interpretation of Bond to create something new as well as familiar.
James Bond (played by Roger Moore) is tasked with looking into the killings of three MI6 agents that all seem to tie back to corrupt dictator of a small Caribbean island of San Monique named Kananga (played by Yaphet Kotto) as well as a Harlem gangster named Mr. Big. The three killings took place in three separate places, the United Nations, San Monique and during a funeral procession through the French Quarter of New Orleans. It's this latter one that really sticks out to me as it must have been a logistical nightmare to pull off. "Oh crap, he went in to use the restroom. Everyone back to one, we'll try it again when he comes back out."
Anyway, it's while investigating in Harlem that Bond finds his way to Mr. Big's lair and meets the beautiful fortune telling tarot expert Solitaire (played by Jane Seymour). He is also spotted by Mr. Big, who's really Kananga is disguise, who orders his goons to kill Bond. Bond manages to overpower them and escape. He then heads to San Monique to continue looking in to Kananga and discovers that he is exploiting the locals fears of voodoo and the occult to protect his poppy fields and heroin production, which he in turn intends to distribute through the Fillet of Soul restaurants owned by his Mr. Big alter ego to increase addiction and create a larger market for himself while driving competitors out of business.
Live and Let Die is often looked back upon as Bond goes Blaxploitation and they're not far off. It definitely feels like it was influenced a lot by that type of film, especially in the Harlem set scenes and overall style of the main villains, including Kananga and his henchmen, including Tee Hee Johnson (played by Julius Harris), a one armed man with a pincher prosthetic arm. The film does balance itself out a bit with having a couple Black good guys as well, with Quarrell Jr (played by Roy Stewart) and Rosie Carver (played by Gloria Hendry) as quite possibly the most incompetent CIA agent ever. Still, having that balance keeps things from feeling too overtly racist (although the portrayals are certainly dated). It's also the only Bond movie to date with overt supernatural themes, from the Voodoo to Kananga's unwavering faith in Solitaire's ability to predict the future through her Tarot, at least until Bond seduces her using a stacked deck of Tarot himself.
Roger Moore makes a decent first turn as James Bond, making a deliberate choice to distance himself from the portrayals Sean Connery and George Lazenby gave us. Instead, he gives us a much more laid back, sardonic and at times light hearted Bond. Jane Seymour ranks up there with some of the more memorable Bond girls with her turn here. Unfortunately, it's the villains that really fail to impress here, with neither Kananga nor any of his rogues gallery really making any sort of truly lasting impressions. The actors give okay performances, but they just don't rank with the likes of Goldfinger or Dr. No or the various incarnations of Ernst Stavro Blofeld that came before them. The film also gives us one of the worst characters introduced to the series, Louisiana Sheriff JW Pepper (played by Clifton James), a character so over the top and annoying that even Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T Justice from the Smokey and the Bandit films would say he needed to turn it down a bit.
Overall, Live and Let Die sits comfortably somewhere in the middle in terms of the Bond films for me. It's not one of the greatest, but it's far from the worst as well. It's got that killer Paul McCartney title track and a decent debut for Roger Moore.
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