Live and Let Die

And here we have the blaxploitation entry in the series. The villain is still fancy and has a secret base, but world-changing plots and nuclear weapons are replaced with heroin trafficking and voodoo rituals. Oh, it's also the first one starring Roger Moore, which is fairly significant. I've seen three of his movies now, and I think he's a pretty good Bond stuck in an era of not very good movies. Live and Let Die is actually pretty good for a while. Paul McCartney's theme song is really entertaining, and it informs the score for the entire movie. Bond's interactions with the predominantly black antagonists are an interesting and somewhat humorous look at the time. Baron Samedi and Tee Hee Johnson are quintessential weird villains for the era. Jane Seymour is a good Bond girl, years before she became the crazy cougar in things like Wedding Crashers.

Once the film gets to New Orleans though, I sort of lost interest. As I've mentioned, the filmmakers back then were very good at finding ways to make action scenes boring. There's a massive boat chase across a bayou that's just interminable. It's over twelve minutes long but filled with very little action other than skipping boats over short strips of dry land and a lot of comic relief by a bumbling southern cop that's not even close to funny. After the villain takes off his insanely bad makeup and reveals himself, he shows up chilling underground with some sharks while his inept henchmen dance to tribal music upstairs. His eventual death is hilariously cheesy looking, and it also marks the first time Bond actually directly killed the main villain in the story. Live and Let Die has some competent moments, and also the series' first real curse as an old lady says "shit", but I didn't like it that much.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Live and Let Die" by Wings
Foreign locations: New York, Caribbean, New Orleans
Bond, James Bond: 24:05
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 3
Kills: 6 humans, 1 snake
Non-lethal takedowns: 7