Live and Let Die tends to have the reputation of being one of the worst of all 22 Bond films.  When I joked to my friend Tyler that I was looking forward to it, he said, "Live and Let Die is supposedly 121 minutes, but it feels like it never ends."  As pessimistic as this sounds, he was exactly right.  Amazingly, Alma and I started fidgeting at the exact same point - the 1:20 mark - with neither of us quite able to believe that there were still 40 minutes left.

Alma spotted this one: the tarot cards in the movie have "007" on the back of them.  No wonder it all worked out for Bond!

The film opens with the murder of three MI6 agents, and then heads to Wings and the title sequence.  It's worth noting how much different "Live and Let Die" sounds than previous Bond themes, all of which were pretty firmly in the realm of "crooning" or what have you - it's the first clear rock song, certainly.  It's also probably the best part of this whole movie, so enjoy it.  Roger Moore, the new Bond, has made yet another conquest, and is roused from his post-coital slumber by M and Moneypenny, here to inform him of a new assignment.  M informs Bond of the death of the agents, as well as the probable connection of a Dr. Kananga, the president of a small island nation called San Monique.  As Bond's flight heads for New York, we're introduced to the occult angle of the film, with a tarot card reader declaring that "A man comes... he travels quickly... he has purpose... he comes over water... he travels with others... he will oppose... he brings violence and destruction."  Pretty vague, I think you'll agree.  Yet in this film, tarot cards are treated as totally real and accurate.  More on that later.  Bond makes contact with Felix Leiter (played by yet another actor, of course, this time David Hedison), then has his driver killed by one of Kananga's men.  Bond manages to avoid crashing the car too heinously, then finds out from Felix the address of the shop where it's registered, which turns out to be a voodoo shop.

So, let's get into this right away.  Why in God's name would you ever send Bond on a mission like this?  He's supposed to be infiltrating a voodoo store, then a restaurant in Harlem, then a small Caribbean island.  And he is so white.  He sticks out like a sore thumb everywhere he goes, even before you get into the fact that every black person in the movie save one appears to be on Kananga's payroll in one way or another.  Even if Bond weren't already overly famous for a secret agent, it is impossible for him to carry out this mission secretly.  What a terrible idea.

"The name's Guy... White Guy."

So Bond goes to this restaurant in Harlem and tries to buy information off the waiter, who immediately activates a trick wall that sends Bond right into the clutches of Mr. Big.  He also meets the tarot card reader, Solitaire (a young Jane Seymour), who is rattled when she turns over the "Lovers" card regarding her and Bond.  Mr. Big sends Bond off to be killed, but for some reason the henchmen march him just far enough to allow him to get the better of them via a fire escape ladder.  He also meets the one black guy not on Kananga or Mr. Big's payroll, a CIA man named Strutter who says what everyone is already thinking when he chides Bond for trying to get away with wearing "whiteface in Harlem."

Bond heads down to San Monique, where once again he is immediately nailed - Kananga's henchman Whisper is there with his room service champagne, and a deadly snake is slipped into the bathroom.  Bond eventually spots the snake and burns it with an improvised flamethrower - a cigar and aerosol can.  Good thing Bond likes to smoke cigars all of a sudden!  We then meet Rosie, the CIA agent based in San Monique who is to assist Bond.  She's also absolutely terrible at every aspect of her job.  She turns out to be a double agent, so you'd think that was why, but no - she isn't any better at that half of her job either.  Bond has sex with her in the jungle, then reveals that he's aware she's a double agent and threatens to kill her.  Rosie runs off, but one of the various voodoo idols hanging out in the trees shoots her dead.

Even by Bond standards, Rosie is a particularly useless female character.  She even has the line, "I'm going to be completely useless to you."  Uh, yep.

That night, Bond parasails to Kananga's house and seduces Solitaire, who is convinced that the cards are correct that the two will be lovers.  (Bond somehow has a stacked deck, in which that is the only card, to finish off the job.)  Solitaire freaks out afterwards, because apparently you lose your psychic powers along with your virginity - but she only freaks out for a minute, and then is already ready to have sex again.  Sure, why not - you're not getting any less psychic!  Also, Moore is old enough to be Seymour's dad and looks it.   Afterwards, Bond says they'll escape and head for his boat, but instead he drags her on his quest to find the source of Kananga's wealth, which turns out to be vast fields of heroin poppies.  Because it's hard to get away from a guy who is the dictator of the island you're on, Bond and Solitaire end up being chased by the police, with Bond commandeering an old, rickety double-decker bus in a car chase whose incredible lameness ranks right up there with Diamonds Are Forever's moon buggy sequence.  Eventually they make it back to the boat.

"That was great, Dad."

Bond is supposed to meet Felix in New Orleans, but gets into a taxi at the airport which turns out to be driven by the same henchman who drove his taxi in New York.  The henchmen plan to drop Bond out of a plane, but he escapes and tools around the tarmac in a plane driven by a middle-aged female flight student in yet another lousy chase scene.  After a destructive end to the usefulness of the airplane he's in, Bond makes it back to the hotel, where Felix has to deal by phone with the angry flight instructor.  (One interesting thing about this movie is the way in which Bond's actions actually have seeming consequences - he's forced to deal with the police at least twice, along with this scene.  Presumably this was supposed to be more realistic, although it's also kind of boring.)

Bond and Felix head for the New Orleans location of the same restaurant from Harlem, where a soul singer belts out a version of "Live and Let Die" which I found excruciating, not because it was bad but because calling that kind of attention to the title of your film within the narrative always makes me cringe.  Bond opts not to sit by the wall this time, but is placed at a table where he can be dropped through the floor instead, which Alma predicted would happen.  Mr. Big is waiting, but Mr. Big turns out to be one and the same as Dr. Kananga, which I predicted would happen.  Kananga explains his plan: give away free heroin to drive the Mafia out of business and raise the number of addicts, at which point he'll start charging for it and make a huge profit.  Not exactly the world-dominating supervillain of the Connery films, although he still has the same level of intricate hideouts for whatever reason.  Kananga tests whether Solitaire still has psychic powers and finds out that she doesn't.  He tells Whisper to take Bond to "the farm."

Is it ever not obvious that this is also Kananga?  The mask is goofy and Yaphet Kotto isn't exactly Rich Little.

This turns out to be a crocodile farm where Kananga also has a sophisticated heroin lab that is somehow located inside a rickety-looking shack.  After a painfully long buildup, Bond is stranded on a rock with crocodiles surrounding him.  Fortunately, a few of them line up so that he can run across their backs to safety!  Intelligently, none of the henchmen were watching him, so Bond is able to set the shack on fire and escape via speedboat.  So begins a prolonged speedboat chase that also introduces a supporting character so terrible he makes Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint look like Oddjob.

One of Kananga's henchmen speeds off in his car to try and get to the end of the canal Bond is in before the boats make it there.  He passes a patrol car containing Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who takes off in pursuit.  Why this character exists I will never know.  Pepper arrives at the scene, with his first line to the henchman being, "You got a set o' wheels that just won't quit, boy!"  While Pepper is not a villain, I don't think he's supposed to be a sympathetic character, given his routine use of that racially-tinged pejorative - I hope he's not, anyway.  Bond somehow jumps the road, with the other boat crushing the sheriff's car, and the chase continues.  This reminds me of how I mentioned before that Bond's actions in the film have the tendency to arouse the attention of local law enforcement, something that hasn't happened much in the past.  But that's hardly an excuse to give Pepper as much screen time as he gets - he's a goofy Southern caricature, but with this film predating both Smokey and the Bandit and "The Dukes of Hazzard" by several years, where did they get the inspiration to put in this kind of character?  Just trying to balance all the goofy blaxploitation with an awful white guy?

Ah durr hurr hurr.

At this point Pepper has had more screen time than Bond in the past five minutes.  But Bond is still being chased, with the lead henchman having stolen Pepper's brother-in-law's boat, supposedly the fastest on the water.  The two end up in a docking area, where Bond gets the upper hand by tossing gasoline onto the henchman, then ramming his boat into one of the larger ships, where it explodes.  Pepper shows up ready to arrest Bond and has to be enlightened by the other policemen who have already talked with Felix.  Felix tells Bond that Kananga and Solitaire have headed back to San Monique, with the only remaining clues in the restaurant being three tarot cards indicating that Solitaire will be killed that night.

Bond heads back to San Monique (clearly shot in the same part of Jamaica that served as "Crab Key" in Dr. No) in time to bust up the voodoo ceremony, headed by Baron Samedi, who we've seen a few times and who is suggested to be a supernatural character.  Bond shoots Samedi, but he turns out to be a dummy; a second Samedi then appears.  Bond pushes this one into a coffin filled with snakes.  Meanwhile, bombs planted by CIA assistant Quarrel Jr. (presumably intended as the son of Dr. No's Quarrel, though he looks way too old for that) go off in the poppy fields.  For some reason Bond doesn't take Solitaire back the way he came, but heads down into the secret tunnel from which Samedi had appeared, which leads to Kananga's lair.  Naturally, Bond is captured.  Kananga plans to feed him and Solitaire to sharks, but Bond uses his gadget-laden watch to escape.  He and Kananga tumble into the water, but when you think this means Kananga will just be eaten by a shark, Bond forces the compressed air pellet from his shark gun into Kananga's mouth.  And what happens?  Kananga actually inflates like a blow-up doll and then explodes up by the ceiling.  Yeah, that happens!  It is just the most ridiculous thing you can imagine.  As usual, there's still one villain to be disposed of in the last five minutes when you thought the movie was over: in this case, Kananga's henchman with the metal arm.  Bond fights him and eventually pushes him out the window of a train.  The end!  Oh, but Baron Samedi is sitting on the end of the train.  So I guess he's actually supernatural?  Insert eye roll here.

My God, he was a balloon all along!  And his evil plan was actually to try and infiltrate the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

What an awful movie.  I mean, really bad.  It does have an attractive Bond girl in Jane Seymour, one of the best so far, but that's small consolation.  The action scenes are mostly tiresome, with much of the action being comprised of three extended chases that don't end up achieving much.  While it's compelling to see Bond in near-constant danger, out of his element as he is in nearly every location, it's a lot less compelling the more the film goes on and the clearer it becomes that the bad guys are always going to do something stupid even when they have Bond at their complete mercy.  Should we shoot him?  No, let's tie him to a winch and slowly lower him into some water.  Should we shoot him?  No, let's leave him on an island with crocodiles but then leave so we can't make sure the job is done.  Should we shoot him?  No, let's just slowly walk him down this alley.  Given Kananga's seemingly endless network of informants and Bond's - and this can't be stressed enough - worldwide fame, you'd think they'd have some idea that you don't want to give James Bond multiple chances to get away.  Of course, if Blofeld still couldn't figure it out by Diamonds Are Forever, what hope did Kananga have?

As for Roger Moore, his performance is interesting.  His Bond gets into more particularly uncomfortable situations than most previously have, and he remains cool under pressure while still giving off genuine anxiety on a few occasions when it's actually called for (such as at the crocodile farm as he is being surrounded by reptiles).  Still, he's on the older side already and rarely looks too comfortable in a physical confrontation, and this certainly wasn't helped by giving him such a young love interest.  The script is also oversaturated with one-liners, even by Bond standards.  I think Moore will look better in the future - he can't possibly have a worse script than this to work with, although on the other hand he's also only going to get older and in this one he's already 45.  Still, with a better movie around him he's destined to be a better Bond, and it seems impossible that that won't happen.

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