Live and Let Die

1973 "Bond is back. Back in action. Back with excitement."
6.7| 2h1m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 27 June 1973 Released
Producted By: United Artists
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.mgm.com/movies/live-and-let-die
Synopsis

James Bond must investigate a mysterious murder case of a British agent in New Orleans. Soon he finds himself up against a gangster boss named Mr. Big.

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Reviews

Interesteg What makes it different from others?
WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
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."
connorbbalboa This is the first Roger Moore Bond film of the seven, and guess what: it's pretty terrible.The plot is that Bond, after the killing of a few British Secret Service agents, is investigating the organization of a Dr. Kananga , who is planning to take over the market of heroin and become rich after giving away a whole boatload of it for free. No really, it's that simple. It's not even that big a threat. Goldfinger's scheme was way more threatening because it would have affected so many people. Here, only people who actually buy drugs will get affected, and not everyone buys drugs. On a side note, Bond causes the fortune-teller girl, Solitaire (the genuinely sweet Jane Seymour), to lose her virginity thanks to a ploy of his where he has a card deck where every one of those cards says that they'll be lovers. Later, when Bond asks for information about Kananga, Solitaire can't use her powers because she'll lose them if she has sex (Not a wise decision, Bond!) Now Bond also has to defend her from Kananga.Being the second actor to play Bond after Connery, there are some noticeable differences, not just in appearance, but HOW he plays the character. First off, he looks more British than George Lazenby, which is already an improvement, and plus, he doesn't try to mimic Connery. His Bond is more light-hearted and slightly warmer (only slightly). However, this approach also means that Moore's Bond gives off SO many puns and one-liners, they get tiresome very quickly. Moore's performance also seems too calculated, like he's trying to figure out what to say and when and how to say it. He doesn't look like the most confident guy in the room. All in all, in this film Moore is a competent, if not outstanding James Bond.But there's more to come in terms of the film's flaws. Let me start by saying: blaxploitation elements and racial stereotyping. All of the villains are African-American, and they seem to enjoy getting back at "the white man." Many times throughout the film, Bond is called a "honky" by the villains and a lot of the African-American culture portrayal in this film is terribly offensive. Bond becoming a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice is mild compared to this. There are "voodoo" rituals that look stereotypical and plus, there is a scene where Solitaire is set to be sacrificed by the people who perform these rituals, and this scene is probably the most offensive of all. It's right up there with the scene in The Birth of a Nation (1915) where a sex-crazed African-American man (portrayed with "blackface" by a Caucasian man), is chasing a teenage Caucasian girl in the woods and trying to force her into marriage. This stereotyping and offensive imagery makes the villains really annoying as well, especially the villain with the hook for a hand called Tee Hee (even more offensive name), who's always smiling and laughing like an a**hole. Plus, not only is this stereotyping offensive, but it makes most of the African-American characters (except maybe the ones who are working with Bond) seem fake, and it doesn't allow the film to have its own identity, and makes it seemed much more dated than other Bond films.In addition to the blaxploitation and offensive stereotypes, there is also a lot of unwanted comedy, thanks to Clifton James' Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who would also appear in the next Bond film. James would also play a similar character in Superman II, although not nearly as annoying. He comes off as a racist and seems to fit a poor Southerner stereotype; he's also too much of a goofy character and causes a very good action scene to go on too long. As previously mentioned, Moore's constant puns and one-liners don't help either.I will admit that this does have a good trap where Bond is stranded in the middle of a small island with crocodiles and alligators and even his watch gadget isn't able to help him. However, like with other traps and prisons, there happens to be a convenient way for Bond to escape, by stepping on top of crocodiles as stepping stones and somehow not falling in.All in all, this is easily one of the worst Bond films I've seen (and I'm only halfway through with the franchise; I sort of started watching these out of order). Goofy comedy, annoying villains, a plan that isn't dangerous enough to care about, and some of the most offensive portrayals of African-Americans and possibly people in the Southern states I have ever seen. Not recommended in any category. Besides the boat chase (before the introduction of Sheriff Pepper), the only other good thing to say is that Jane Seymour is so sweet as Solitaire, and she brings such a warm personality to the character, especially after she and Bond sleep together. It makes me wish she was in another, better Bond film, or even a better film, period.
Filipe Neto Directed by Guy Hamilton and with a script by Tom Mankiewicz, this is the eighth film in the franchise and keeps Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli as producers. In this film, the first in which Roger Moore embodies the British spy, franchise tries to survive at two powerful factors of danger: the departure of Sean Connery after several years giving life to 007, and the unstoppable evolution of the world, with the seventies bringing a radical change in the audience. Thus, producers and screenwriter tried to attract new audiences, in particular the black public, attracted not only by black actors but also for some locations. Another subject that the film will address, and that was on the agenda during these times, are drugs and trafficking.In this film, the British agent will fight an American drug baron but gets lost in the black neighborhood of Harlem, where he cannot pass unnoticed and almost finds himself in danger. The track eventually leads Bond to Louisiana, where the persecution of bandits brings us the hilarious Sheriff J. W. Pepper, who worked not only as a film comic element but also as a severe criticism against the conservatism of white society in the southern states. We must remind ourselves that this movie was released at a time when American society was in deep transformation, largely thanks to the struggle of black society for respect, equality and civil rights, which were denied until then, particularly, in the South. The film then heads to the Caribbean, to an island that was probably inspired by Haiti and where the audience is faced with superstitions and beliefs as voodoo or magic.In these film, Roger Moore proved that could hold his role, and the agent could survive Sean Connery. In fact, he even manages to be much more English, while maintaining the habit of never losing his composure whatever the situation. The villains were in charge of Yaphet Kotto and Julius Harris, the latter in the role of Tee Hee, the man with the metal arm. Geoffrey Holder embodies the Baron Samedi, Haitian voodoo character who enters this film. The bond-girl was Jane Seymour, the role of the tarot reader Solitaire.For many people, "Live and Let Die" is one of the oddest films in the franchise because of the amount of unusual elements featuring: "blaxploitation", magic, voodoo, superstition, drugs. And these people aren't without reason. Today, this film is strange and doesn't leave many memories, like many films of the seventies. There are even those who think that is the worst movie of the franchise. Perhaps. But it helped to keep Bond alive and adapted him to a new era. For posterity stays the good performance of the elegant and humorous Roger Moore and the introduction song, written by Paul McCartney and who would receive, years later, a new life through the cover of Guns N'Roses.
Thomas Drufke It took a while for the Bond films to get back into form, but Live and Let Die was a big leap forward toward the greatness that were the first 3 films. We had a new Bond in Roger Moore here, and a great one I may add. I never really bought into Lazenby as Bond in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', but it took a matter of minutes before I bought into Moore as 007. In many ways I think this film hearkens back to Dr. No. It has the one villain focus, instead of the Spectre approach (which is good in its own right). But it also takes place on plenty of mysterious locations, very similar to Dr. No.While the plot doesn't have a global scale like almost every other Bond film does, Yaphet Kotto gives us a menacing turn as a drug lord who's killing ways are different than anything we have seen before in a Bond film. For me, it was a good change of pace from the Blofeld movies. Even though it's a much different story than the other films, Mr. Big was perhaps my favorite villain since Goldfinger, and most definitely the best overall film since then. I even found the smiling sidekick to be entertaining. I will say, I found it strange as to the drug lords obsession with using reptiles and amphibians to kill their enemies. First snakes, then crocodiles, and sharks?This film is famous for a few reasons, but it's theme song being near the top. It flows well with the themes of the actual film to go along with it's catchy hook. But I think some recognition should be given to Jane Seymour, who at 22 years of age, holds her own against Moore and Kotto. Not to mention the fact that she is still gorgeous to this day. Most of all, I think this film is more fun than the past few films. It's not as dry and far more realistic than previous entries. The action scenes aren't anything extraordinary and the few policeman sequences are just plain dumb, but Live and Let Die is loads of fun.+Refreshing entry+Good and unique Bond villain+Seymour+Theme song-Kooky police officers-Not a ton of action7.3/10