- I suppose the most remarkable thing about Live and Let Die is that normally a film like this would easily be the worst in a series. In the collection of twenty-plus James Bond films, however, it is alarmingly far from the bottom of the pile. In fact, it's not even Roger Moore's worst Bond, an honor that belongs to A View to a Kill, and it may even be better than Sean Connery's worst efforts, Diamonds are Forever and Never Say Never Again. Nonetheless, Live and Let Die is a disappointing entry in the Bond pantheon rendered even more depressing by the fact that it squanders both the talented Yaphet Kotto and Paul McCartney's excellent theme song.
- The plot follows 007's attempts to discover how the murders of three secret agents are related to a Harlem drug dealer called Mr. Big and a Caribbean dictator named Kananga (Kotto). Along the way, Bond enlists the help of contractual players "M" (Bernard Lee), Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), and Felix Leiter (David Hedison), although the weaponsmith "Q" is strangely absent from this installment. Given that the film's gadgets are subsequently limited to a magnetic watch, I suppose the remaining Bond evaluation criteria are the girls and the henchmen. Jane Seymour turns in a completely adequate performance as the psychic Solitaire while Kananga's cohort is a flavorful bunch that includes an iron-clawed heavy (Julius Harris), a pudgy whisperer (Earl Jolly Brown), and the truly charismatic Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder). So far, not the best, but hardly the worst.
- Unfortunately, it seems that Live and Let Die's production team, like its character Solitaire, gazed into the future to perceive just how uneven the film could be without torpedoing the series completely. Thus, the writers include some truly cringe-worthy allusions to racial politics and Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry), the most painfully palatable blaxploitation heroine imaginable. There are also some asinine plot points involving a laughably transparent double identity and what is easily the most cartoonish death any Bond villain has ever experienced. The worst offense, however, may be the introduction of Clifton James as Sheriff Pepper. Although Pepper's presence in The Man With The Golden Gun would somehow be less necessary than it is here, how could anybody not find this crude amalgam of Southern stereotypes to be completely excruciating? He's the worst in a series of bad decisions that spanned several consecutive films and made the 1970's era a tough time for James Bond fans everywhere. That the director of this film and Diamonds are Forever also made Goldfinger is a mystery I doubt even James Bond could solve.
- Geoffrey Holder is more famous to my generation as the "7-Up" guy. Ha ha ha haa!
