Review of Live and Let Die (1973) by Allan C — 07 Mar 2015

Oddball James Bond picture was Roger Moore's first outing as the iconic character. Bond gets caught up in drug dealing voodoo New Orleans mobsters. There are still gadgets, girls, colorful henchmen and plenty of action, so it's definitely a James Bond picture, but it's not a very memorable one.

Directed by Guy Hamilton, who directed some classic Bond pictures, including "Goldfinger," delivers some solid action sequences, but I blame the script by Tom Mankiewicz for the film's cartoony story and sensibility.

Roger Moore is decent as Bond, though he hand't quite found his version of the character quite yet. I still think that Moore was far better and much cooler when he played Simon Templar, The Saint, than he ever was as Bond.

Yaphet Kotto plays the main villain and Geoffrey Holder (the 7-Up Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah guy) plays Baron Samedi, one of the two colorful henchmen. This film also introduced Clifton James as Sheriff Pepper who'd reappear in a slightly larger role in "Man With the Golden Gun.

" And I'd forgotten that Jane Seymour was a Bond Girl. She gets an "Introducing" credit here even though she had prior film credits. Another weakness of the film is that it's missing a John Barry score and instead has a forgettable George Martin score, although this is somewhat make up for with a Paul McCartney's excellent theme song, which is actually the most memorable part of this film.