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.
WHAT I LIKED: If Connery played Bond like a bull in a china shop, Roger Moore plays the character like someone who owns the whole store. He swaggers about not with Connery's brutish out-of-place smirk, but with the raised eyebrows of someone who's entirely at home in his world and is similarly unflustered by any danger. That partly comes across in his first installment 'Live and Let Die,' because the script has Bond make more delicate espionage moves, and that - along with the way the plot slowly reveals itself - makes for a film with a successfully mysterious unfolding narrative.
We begin by brilliantly witnessing the suspicious death of three people in the pre-titles sequence, and we later learn these are agents whose demise Bond is sent to the US to investigate. He ends up on the trail of a gangster come heroin dealer, and follows their activities across the country until he learns of their plan. What's refreshing is that rather than stumbling across Spectre (the villain of almost every Connery film) the mission stays largely small-scale and it's a case of him figuring out what's going on and then making multiple attempts to out-whit the bad guys. I'd like to think if it was Connery's character on the case, he'd have followed them round a bit, waltzed into their lair, escaped, and then gone straight into their factory with an army of DEA agents and blown everything up. This is quite a delicate, more unraveling affair, and that's satisfying in its own way.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The biggest problem with the film is that because Moore doesn't possess Connery's out-of-place, underdog nature, it's harder to root for him as a character. Apart from in the hilarious scene where he walks into the gangsters' club, he basically never looks like a man playing it cool when he's really out his depth; he simply looks like someone who is in complete control of every situation. There's agreeably something appealing about that, and it's an approach which is comedically harnessed better in later installments, but it just doesn't make the character as engaging. Couple that with the fact that much of the attempts at comedy fall flat (namely in the campy boat chase with the hugely unfunny Sheriff Pepper) and the strange voodo and Blaxploitation stuff, and it's hard to stay with things right to the end.
VERDICT: With a slowly unfolding mystery and Roger Moore playing a cooler Bond who's more at home in this world, 'Live and Let Die,' is a pretty good adventure for the most part, but it does have its flaws.
