When it comes to the debate over the best actor to portray James Bond, the answers vary greatly.  For the record, my vote is for Daniel Craig.  This is not recency bias.  Usually, my preference is for the original.  For this same reason, many people pick Sean Connery as their favorite 007 performer.  I have heard some say that they like Pierce Brosnan best.  The one is rarely mentioned is Roger Moore.  Because of this, when this question came up a few days ago with one of my best friends from high school, and he picked this third in line, I scoffed.  I did so without actually having seen any of the Bond films in which he appears.  My incredulousness was based solely on hearsay.  Since I have undertaken reviewing the entire franchise, aside from the ones I have already covered, I looked upon getting to Live and Let Die (1973) with trepidation.  It is the first of his run as the famous military intelligence, section six (MI6) agent.  About half way through, I began thinking that maybe my friend was not as crazy as I thought.  However, then we got the boat chase sequence.  This will hopefully all become clear as we go along.  In any case, at least he did not choose George Lazenby.

The beginning of Live and Let Die may be confusing judging by the title as there is quite a bit of dying and not a lot of living.  A series of people around the world are being assassinated, including in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Those being bumped off are all MI6 operatives, which is enough of a serious situation to prompt a visit from the spy organization’s head, M (Bernard Lee), to James Bond’s private residence in the wee hours of the morning.  True to form, James is in bed with some lady, and he tries to hide his indiscretion while his boss attempts to explain yet another global threat.  Part of what we have seen before we get to this interrupted assignation involves voodoo, which takes place on the fictional Caribbean island nation of San Monique.  Its dictator, Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), is in New York City, and this is where James is sent to start his investigation.  Before he has a chance to connect with his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) liaison, Felix Leiter (David Hedison), James’ taxi driver is shot dead by passengers in another car.  James manages to track the vehicle to a bar in Harlem.  Not long after entering, he is captured through a secret door.  There he meets Solitaire (Jane Seymour), a reader of tarot cards working for a heroin dealer going by the name Mr. Big (Yaphet Kotto).  After James has his inevitable flirtation with Solitaire, Mr. Big comes out and promptly orders James’ execution.  Of course, James is able to slip from their grasp, with some help from the CIA, and then flies to San Monique.  Upon arrival at his hotel, he finds that somebody has already checked into his room, somebody calling herself Mrs. Bond.  This is CIA agent Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry), though she turns out to be a plant in Dr. Kananga’s organization.  This is uncovered when James asks her to show him where the MI6 operative was murdered on the island.  Instead, she takes him to where he is captured by Dr. Kananga’s men, but not before she is killed.  Once in Dr. Kananga’s compound, James has another encounter with Solitaire.  Using a rigged deck of tarot cards, he convinces her that they are fated to be lovers and thus they make their escape.  While on the run, they come across the real source of Dr. Kananga’s power: poppy fields for the production of heroin.  Because there appears to be a connection between this and the United States, James and Solitaire travel to New Orleans.  Unfortunately, Dr. Kananga anticipates this move and is at the airport to take back Solitaire.  James gets away, but suffers a similar fate when he and Felix visit the same establishment as in New York City.  It is a sort of chain of murder bars.  Once more coming face-to-face with Mr. Big, James learns that the American criminal is actually Dr. Kananga with a prosthetic face.  This information is revealed when James says he will not tell whether he had, er, deflowered Solitaire and thus taken away her power.  More about this later.  In the meantime, instead of simply doing away with James, he is taken to an alligator/crocodile farm to be eaten by the reptiles.  This time, James gets away, first by jumping on the backs of some conveniently aligned apex predators, and then hijacking a speed boat.  This is when the aforementioned chase takes place.  In addition to being long, part of it takes place on land.  Seriously.  I hope you can see where the film went off the rails.  Anyway, James chases Dr. Kananga back to San Monique.  Again, with the help of the CIA, he makes it to the voodoo ritual that is meant to do away with Solitaire.  He prevents this from happening, and has a final showdown with Dr. Kananga.  The end result of this tussle is the villain being blown up like a balloon, and bits of him being splattered all over his underground lair.  With this, James and Solitaire earn a nice train ride across the United States.  Yet, before they can settle in for what we have come to expect from James Bond, Dr. Kananga’s chief henchman attacks them.  I almost set “right hand man,” but stopped because he has a prosthetic.  This implement, though, proves to be his undoing.  The end.

The aspect of Live and Let Die that I glossed over in the previous section is the role the voodoo plays in the plot.  There is also Solitaire, who is a sort of priestess of the tarot cards.  You can see where this would be ripe fodder for a Catholic reviewer.  The first, and most obvious thing to say about all of it is that the church does not condone these practices.  Voodoo especially, and sometimes tarot readings, call upon the power of the enemy, and that is directly antithetical to God.  The film does not get into such specifics, and culturally speaking, it is not a flattering portrayal of these things. Indeed, I would not say that this movie has much of anything good to say about African Americans in general.  Outside of Quarrel Jr. (Roy Stewart), who works with James and the CIA in helping bring down Dr. Kananga, every African American is depicted as either in league with voodoo, or a part of this vast heroin trafficking scheme.  Where they do get into detail about voodoo is when you see how the so-called religion makes a mockery of Catholicism.  Voodoo does not lead to any warm fuzzies for the people it is directed at, which further explains why the Church would be against it.  Finally, there is Solitaire.  She is depicted as having a “gift” with the tarot cards, the ability to see things beyond that which is front of our eyes, including the future.  Once more, this is not something the Church approves of because it contravenes the power of God.  Can God give people these traits?  He can because He is the Creator of the universe.  There are also examples throughout Biblical and Sacred History of people performing such feats, though not through the use of divination tools like tarot.  However, they are always meant to further God’s will for us, whereas what Solitaire does serves a more selfish purpose.  It is more proof of the lies the enemy tells us to separate us from God.

As I alluded to in the introduction, I felt a better Bond film was unfolding with Live and Let Die . . . until we got to the boat chase.  Everything that happens after this is part and parcel of some of the silliness you see in the previous films.  If you can stop it three quarters of the way through, then you have a decent film, though not one I would necessarily recommend.