When I first sketched out my ranking of Bond movies, I had originally put this one at the very bottom. It was only after watching this back to back with the extremely tedious The Man With The Golden Gun that I had to grudgingly admit that it was somewhat better than I had remembered it to be. Still, saying that Roger Moore's first outing as Bond is less tedious than his second is like saying that a watching grass grow is more exciting than watching paint dry. We're talking about subtle gradations of tedium indeed. Once again we have a movie that is completely unmemorable in every respect. In fact, I bet if you're honest with yourself, the only thing you can remember about it before reading this rehash is Paul McCartney's theme song. I'm not even a Beatles/McCartney fan but I have to admit that tracking down a Wings' greatest hits CD will let you relive a high point of the film in a mere 3 to 4 minutes.
Fleming's Live And Let Die is actually one of his best books, and not at all a bad way to introduce oneself to the Bond of Fleming's work. Fleming's villain Mr. Big is one of his more memorable ones. As his name implies he is physically imposing, he is physically grotesque, and highly intelligent. So naturally when it came time to script Live And Let Die, the screenwriters utterly discarded Fleming's villain! While a Mr. Big appears in the movie, the only apparent motivation for his inclusion is a truly unsurprising plot twist. I'll be discreet on this point just to force you to watch this and suffer as I have in order to learn it. Fleming's book is also one of the most brutal in the series. In a memorable passage, Mr. Big's henchman breaks Bond’s finger. In another memorable part, sharks mutilate Bond's friend Felix Leiter. Needless to say this is more good material that never made it into the screenplay. About the only thing in the book to make it to screen is the character of Mr. Big's fortuneteller, Solitaire. Solitaire is of central importance in the book, but ends up woefully underserved by her part in the film.
The defining aspect of Live And Let Die is how horrendously dated it is. Fleming's novel, of course, featured an all black criminal organization. Now, in this day and age it seems to some to be necessary to comb through material written many years ago merely to lambaste it for not living up to current standards of political correctness. I just recently reread Live And Let Die and personally I think you'd need to be pretty thin-skinned to conclude Fleming was a racist on the basis of this book. Fleming's ear for American speech tended to be a bit tinny, so some of the dialogue by black characters doesn't come across very well, but for the most part Fleming plays it completely straight in the novel. The fact that Bond's adversaries are black merely serves to add an exotic dimension to a plot in which the villains could be of any race or nationality. Trendy 70's screenwriters however couldn't merely try to follow Fleming's lead and just present major characters as a bunch of intimidating villains, steadfast allies, and beautiful women who happen to be black. This flick has to be authentic! Hip! Happenin'! Right on! Consequently the film is stuffed with disastrously out-of-style fashions, gaudy "pimp-mobiles", and hairstyles we pray will never make a comeback. We could easily forgive this if we're watching Shaft or Superfly or another blaxsploitation classic, but a James Bond movie? Once more a movie dictum holds true - nothing dates a movie like an attempt to be cutting-edge and progressive, and Live And Let Die is the most dated Bond flick of all. Furthermore, given the fact that the screenwriters have discarded the plot of the book a lot of this self-dating isn't even necessary. Nose-picker collars, afros and mutton-chop sideburns all make their appearance in the movie's American locales, but the movie's villain is one Mr. Kananga, prime-minister (?) of the fictional Caribbean island of San Monique. It isn't even truly necessary to the film's plot to touch down much in the U.S. at all.
At least Live And Let Die's plot avoids the self-defeating complexity of that of The Man With The Golden Gun. Three British agents are killed at the movie's outset and Bond is set after the suspected killer. Mr. Kananga is tagged as guilty almost immediately and Bond flies to America to shadow him. An attempt on Bond's life in America leads him to a run-in with Kananga's ally, Mr. Big, and an introduction to Solitaire, Kananga's fortuneteller. Bond escapes death only to find that Kananga has fled back to San Monique. Bond follows Kananga both to find that he is growing poppies to make heroin, and to seduce Solitaire into escaping from him. After fleeing the island to New Orleans he and Solitaire are recaptured by Kananga (dooh!), and he has to escape death once again and return to the island to save Solitaire (again!) and finally punch Kananga's ticket.
As this literally thumbnail sketch shows, the plot is more of an excuse for stunts than anything else. This is, in and of itself, not critically damaging to the movie. What critically damages the movie is the fact that the stunts the plot's an excuse for are not all that exciting. Even if the stunts were more exciting, however, there still are some big problems with the whole set-up. First of all Kananga's villainy doesn't really make sense. Are we really supposed to believe that Kananga is some high-ranking government politico on San Monique? If so, then why is he bothering with drugs at all? He can probably skim more off the monthly U.S. aid or World Bank loan check than he can earn selling drugs in a year. And even if he were taking time-off from torturing political opponents and selling drugs as a hobby say, why would he even give a damn if anybody knew it? Here he is spending the entire film trying to kill foreign agents that learn of his scheme, but when he appears at the film's start, he is a delegate to the U.N. He could probably be shipping heroin in by the carload in a diplomatic pouch and selling it from the trunk of his double-parked limo in New York without being in any sort of legal jeopardy. There may have been a germ of an interesting idea, here. After all despots like that madman, "Pappa Doc" Duvalier, that ran Haiti have a monstrous reputation, but they certainly wouldn't be interested in drugs. As portrayed by Yaphet Kotto, however, there is none of this thuggish menace. Kananga is simply a well-spoken black man in a suit, no more frightening than Kofi Annan.
A further problem that I'd let pass if the movie were better is the fact that Kananga's plan doesn't even make economic sense. The screenwriters evidently thought selling drugs was too mundane, so they tried to give an air of master-criminal craftiness to Kananga's business. He claims to want to literally give away heroin in an effort to drive other drug dealers out of business, and then jack up prices as a monopoly supplier. This simply wouldn't be economically feasible. If it were, why doesn't Coke start giving away free drinks to drive Pepsi bankrupt? You may argue about the addictive nature of the product, but we're told cigarettes are highly addictive and Philip-Morris isn't giving them away for free. This whole "plan" actually smells like another bit of 70's paranoia to go with The Man With The Golden Gun's "energy crisis". This was when the Japanese automakers were out competing American companies by offering a far better product. Rather than working to improve their auto designs, American companies spun tales about how the Japanese were unfairly selling cars too cheaply in an effort to drive them out of business and monopolize the car market.
I will say in this film's defense that Jane Seymour's performance as Solitaire is actually quite good. Solitaire's big story is that she can tell the future for Kananga only so long as she remains a virgin. Some of the most stylish scenes in the film feature Solitaire's reading of Tarot cards for Kananga superimposed over scenes of Bond questing after Kananga. Different cards begin to symbolize players in the film, with Bond's being the Fool, and Solitaire's the High Priestess. The Death card makes inevitable appearances following Bond wherever he goes. As Solitaire becomes more and more involved with charting Bond's movements, the Lovers card begins turning up to obviously forecast Solitaire's future as much as it does Bond's. It's surprising how much Ms. Seymour does with these scenes though she has little actual dialogue during them (or during the film as a whole for that matter). A slave to Kananga because of her powers, Solitaire reacts with growing dismay as those same powers begin to predict what she can only regard as her own doom and Ms. Seymour is highly successful at conveying Solitaire's fears. Later, when the die is cast so to speak, and Kananga's knowledge of it become all to clear, Ms. Seymour manages to project some surprising strength as she explains rather stoically how this turn of events was inevitable. If there were ever a chance for this movie to avoid the depths of this countdown, it would have of necessity involved greatly expanding the role of Solitaire not only to work more with this subplot but also to give Ms. Seymour more screen time.
Given the quality of Ms. Seymour's acting, it is amazing to realize how little time she actually has on-screen. It's possible that no other Bond "final girl" has been accorded less actual dialogue than Jane Seymour gets here. While she is physically present in many scenes, most of those scenes feature her being led by Bond on one of their many attempts to escape Kananga and contain no dialogue. It's even possible to argue that as written, she ends up not even being necessary to the plot. In Fleming's book, Solitaire physically sought Bond out in an attempt to escape Mr. Big. In the film, she rather cryptically warns him of a betrayal by sending him a Tarot card. It is Bond, who somewhat illogically and at great personal risk, seeks her out at the home Kananga has provided for her. Bond after all is on the island to spy on Kananga. He is only guessing as to who sent him the warning and, even if his guess as to it being Solitaire is correct, he can't possibly have a reason to think that she will actually run away with him. At this point in the film, he has spoken possibly three lines of dialogue with her. The rational thing to do is get the goods on Kananga and report back to higher authorities, as he attempts to do after escaping with Solitaire anyway. Even if we root for Bond to escape with Solitaire (and we do!), the screenwriters have made a disastrous calculation in portraying Bond's seduction. He enters her home with a deck of Tarot cards containing only the Lovers card, and asks her to draw from it. Seeing the card she expects, she gives in to his advances. Frankly, this makes Bond look like a deceitful s*$t instead of a hero. This seems like some later Moore traits popping up inappropriately early. In Moore's later outings with everything being played for laughs, Moore's luck with the ladies was in an of itself a bit of a running gag. Live And Let Die, however, is far to serious in tone, and Solitaire too complex a character for this whole scene to do anything other than make Bond look like a cad.
Reviewing this film also serves as an introduction to a problem that has consistently plagued the series. The problem stems from some sleazy formulaic reasoning on the part of the filmmakers. Typically the filmmakers would reason that a good Bond movie entails Bond making it with X number of girls before the credits role, with X being strictly greater than 1. Thus time after time it was necessary to shoehorn in extraneous female leads even if they had absolutely no plot function whatsoever. The lady unfortunate enough to star as a requisite bedpost notch here is Rosie Carver, played by actress Gloria Hendry. Actually the filmmakers deserve a dollop of credit here, but only for casting. Ms. Hendry is black, and not Halle Berry weak cafe-au-lait black, but double espresso no cream black. It was ballsy romantic casting indeed to link Moore, a man of fish-belly whiteness, with blaxsplotation veteran Hendry in this film. It does credit to the Bond series that they could get away with things that even today most moviemakers would shy away from. Unfortunately a memorable moment in the Bond series ends up totally subverted by the fact that the character of Rosie Carver as written seems to be a dry run for the awful Mary Goodnight. Carver is supposed to be some rookie CIA agent (?) assigned to help Bond in San Monique. In this universe, rookie equals incompetent equal yet more un-comic relief. Carver's only role in the movie besides the above discussed one is to goof up again and again in a desperate bid for laughs. I can't complain about Ms. Hendry as an actress, and she's sure easy on the peepers, but her character very quickly wears out its welcome - biting the dust just in time to avoid becoming a major annoyance. And hey there you we're-not-racist-like-Fleming screenwriters, isn't it pretty demeaning to suggest that an actual agent of the CIA would be absurdly frightened of voodoo trappings merely because she's black?
At least Kananga's henchmen are a big step up from the unfortunate Nick Knack. Big, bald, charismatic Julius Harris plays Tee-Hee. Mr. Harris actually steals every scene he's in, and led me to wonder if he might have done a far better job as lead villain Kananga than the terminally bland Kotto. Harris tends to radiate joviality rather than actual menace, however, so that may not have worker that well either. Tee-Hee is supposedly missing an arm and sporting a mechanical claw on the end of an artificial one. This is realized by the less than convincing expedient of Harris pulling his shirt cuff over his hand while he holds the claw. Bond and Tee-Hee trade blows on a train at the end of the film in one of the better action scenes in the film but actually, if you think about, Bond should be able to handle an amputee (!) with a lot more ease than he shows here. The only other henchman of note is Geoffrey Holder's Baron Samedi. Readers of a certain age might remember Holder chortling over cola nuts in an old 7-up commercial. In truth Bond makes pretty short work of Samedi at the end (or does he??), but his bizarre appearance and booming laugh make for a bit part more memorable than most.
Live And Let Die truly disappoints on locales. I believe Jamaica stands in for the island of San Monique and, while some lovely scenery is on display, its not used to any great effect. The whole movie actually has a very set bound look and feel so even if a lot of footage was filmed in Jamaica, a lot of said footage could have just as easily been done on a soundstage. A lot of the locales appearing during Bond and Solitaire's escape from the island are in addition of the same depressing third world type that featured in The Man With The Golden Gun's seedy Bangkok locales, complete with the awful overseas model police cars. I of course realize that many, many people the world over live in conditions that Americans would find unpleasant, but I go to Bond films for escapism not for accurate depictions of third world poverty. New Orleans and surrounding areas are featured in the latter half of the movie and are quite pretty, but woefully unexotic. I went to Charleston, S.C. on my honeymoon and loved the place, but even so it would seem pretty unlikely that James Bond would show up there. Similarly New Orleans is a place I've always wanted to visit, but don't particularly expect to feature prominently in a Bond film. Where next? Phoenix? San Diego? Providence? Chicago? Beautiful cities all, but not really known for global intrigue. Worst served in the film is New York, whose most prominently featured locale is Harlem. It's possible to quibble about what we are to make of Bond's trip there, but the film clearly implies one of two things. Either we are supposed to admire Bond's fearlessness in visiting Harlem even though he's white, or we're supposed to laugh at his naiveté for not realizing that, as a white man, he shouldn't be visiting Harlem at all. In Fleming's novel, Bond and Felix Leiter did indeed visit Harlem. But when the novel was written in the early 50's, Harlem was a place that people of all races visited regularly for dining, drinking, and music. For Fleming, Harlem was thrilling and exotic. In the 70's, Harlem had apparently already descended into crime and chaos. That fact actually just makes Bond's visit in the movie pretty sad and dispiriting and totally at odds with the sense of enjoyment that Fleming was able to invest in Bond's visit in the book.
In a great article over at Her Majesty's Secret Servant, Michael Reed compares the films of Roger Moore and Sean Connery and draws a host of surprising parallels. Most relevant here is his comparison of Dr. No, Connery's first film, and Live And Let Die, Moore's first film. It seems undeniable that the screenwriters wanted to introduce Moore in a story very similar to the one that introduced Connery. Thus the teaser in Live And Let Die concerns the assassination of three British agents in three different locales. Bond is not seen at all. While Dr. No has no teaser, it begins exactly the same way with the assassination of British agents. Following this, Bond is sent off to investigate the killings in both films. I'll also point out an extremely similar scene in both films in which Bond is menaced by a tarantula in Dr. No and Bond is menace by a snake in Live And Let Die. The difference between the two scenes mainly consists in the fact that the tarantula scene is played strictly for suspense, while the snake scene segues into an excuse for Rosie Carver's "comic" relief. The teaser for Live And Let Die is not exactly disappointing per se. The phony funeral staged to assassinate the agent in New Orleans is memorable, if implausible. After all, does Kananga really need to involve hundreds of people in the killing of a man in broad daylight, when they could have just plugged him and dropped him in the ocean? Once again, however, even though there is no rule that says Bond films have to begin with an outrageous stunt, when the movie is lacking in other respects the lack of a memorable thrill to start the film tells against it.
One of the best set pieces in the film actually comes immediately following the credits when Bond touches down in New York on his mission. One of Kananga's henchmen kills Bond's driver from a passing car while they're on the freeway, and his car begins careening out of control. Bond is forced to bring the car under control from the back seat resulting in the expected mayhem to other cars on the road, be they moving or parked. The bit is quite good, but unfortunately quickly over. A lead on the car that killed his driver precipitates his above-mentioned trip to Harlem and his first run in with Mr. Big. Mr. Big, displaying a rare degree of judgment for a Bond villain, summarily orders his goons to simply take the honky out to be wasted. Needless to say, said goons fail to do so - ending up on the losing end of a somewhat perfunctory tussle - but Mr. Big's directness might have ended Bond's career a lot more quickly if other series villains had shown it.
After the Harlem run-in, Bond is quickly off to San Monique on the trail of Kananga. It isn't until his dubious decision to seduce Solitaire into fleeing the island with him that action recommences, in the form of (uh, oh!) another car chase. To be completely accurate, I should probably say bus chase. After Kananga realizes that Solitaire has left her home and is on the run, he alerts the local police to capture her and Bond. Seeing the police are after him, Bond steals a double-decker bus (?) in order to make his escape. You might think that this would be a poor choice of getaway vehicle, but given the lousy cars the police are provided with in "San Monique", Bond is actually able to remain ahead of his pursuers. The whole bus theft is actually an excuse for a pair of stunts that are sadly once again interesting rather than exciting. At one point during the chase, Bond spins the bus around 180 degrees and takes off in the opposite direction. To effectively end the chase, Bond rides under a bridge too low for the bus and shears the top clean off, providing something for the pursuers to duly run into. If I'm making it sound very dry and academic, it's because it is. The problem with so many of the stunts in Live And Let Die doesn't stem from their being technically unimpressive, but from the fact that they're all essentially isolated and static. Nothing that occurs before is particularly exciting and nothing that follows is particularly exciting, so all they serve to do is briefly relieve the overall tedium of the proceedings.
And if the bus chase has a whiff of silliness about it, what follows is sillier still. Bond and Solitaire believe that they have successfully escaped, but after arriving in New Orleans they are waylaid by Mr. Big's man and taken to a small private airport. In what follows it truly looks as if Bond simply abandons Solitaire and jumps into a nearby private plane! Bad show, 007! I guess all that baloney about lovers trusting each other from the night before was just pillow talk. When you're cornered it's every lover for him/herself. In the private plane is an elderly lady waiting for her flying instructor, and Bond takes control of the plane in an attempt to stay one step ahead of Mr. Big's men. Now frankly I don't know a whole lot about private planes, but would a small private prop plane be able to outrun a car if it wasn't opened full throttle as for takeoff? I somehow doubt it. My doubt's aside, Bond does manage to outrun all the cars chasing after him and get the wings knocked off the plane to boot just so we can all enjoy a good hearty laugh. And since there's nothing funnier than elderly women swearing, the old lady in Bond's plane does so in an exaggerated fashion just to add to the hilarity.
To hurry along, Solitaire has been recaptured but Bond has escaped. He goes to a local restaurant that he knows is associated with Mr. Big and is promptly recaptured himself. Although Mr. Big was ready to waste the guy in an instant earlier in the movie now that Bond has caused no end of destruction and cost Solitaire her powers, he decides to prepare an overly elaborate death for Bond so that he can escape once again. This involves Bond's trip to the farm. The farm in this case in an alligator farm, and Bond is stranded on an island in the center of a pond full of the killer reptiles. In an amazing bit, Bond walks across the backs of several alligators to reach the shore. Kudos to the real life owner of the alligator farm, Ross Kananga, for being nuts enough to do this stunt. The Inside Live And Let Die short feature on the DVD of this film shows the footage of all his failed attempts, and the guy nearly got his foot bit off for his troubles! I'm sad to say, however, that as wacky as this bit is, it falls prey to feeling just as isolated as the bus stunts discussed above. The lead in is not very exciting and what follows is most definitely not exciting, so over all it just makes you sit up and take notice for a minute before returning to the comatose state that is natural induced in a viewer by the film.
Now comes the part that fills me with dread to have to relive. After his escape from the 'gators, Bond hops into a nearby speedboat to make his escape. Mr. Big's goons see the escape and take off in hot pursuit. What follows has to be the single most tedious action sequence ever filmed. I've already discussed my lack of interest in most car chases, and I seldom find other modes-of-transport chases to be all that much better. The boat chase in this movie however arouses new depths of apathy in the viewer. Imagine the most lackluster third-rate car chase that you've ever seen on screen. Now imagine that chase lasting four hours. Now imagine that chase well larded with the most odious comic relief possible in the form of an obnoxious, loud-mouthed caricature of a redneck Southern sheriff called J.W. Pepper. Only after all this would you have some small idea of just how uninvolving the whole thing is. Surely the folks over at the on-line Merriam-Webster's have snagged a video clip of this sequence to link to under the word interminable. I could easily go on and on describing the various hijinx that take place during this chase. Boats leap over roads, plow through wedding ceremonies, fly into police cars, cause police car pileups, and eventually one explodes. The astonishing fact is however that absolutely none of these things is the least bit exciting. It is in fact the central tragedy of this whole misbegotten enterprise that what was clearly meant to be the edge-of-the-seat moment in the film is in fact the most unwelcome aspect of the thing. For the first, if not the last, time in this countdown I have to wish that there were actually fewer stunts in a Bond movie.
After the end of this sequence (Yes, praise the Lord, the sequence does end!), Bond is off to San Monique once again to destroy Kananga's poppy fields. He still seems rather coldly casual about having abandoned Solitaire to her fate, and it's not clear that saving her is on the agenda for his trip back to Kananga's island. After setting charges in Kananga's poppy fields, however, Bond sees that Solitaire is about to meet her doom via the same sort of voodoo ceremony that claimed the life of one of the agent's killed in the movie's teaser. Bond rescues her, but the large crowd forces them to flee down a nearby trap-door (?) and into Kananga's underground lair. Yes, it's the typical lair with the usual swooshing metal door, catwalks, the whole bit. Again, I must ask however, why does Kananga need a lair? If he's the prime minister on San Monique he's probably already built more palaces than Saddam Hussein. Why can't he use devote one not used for torturing political prisoners to the whole heroin thing? At least this time around the lair is much better manned with henchmen.
Yet, even though those henchmen capture Bond and Solitaire again and take them to a room (cave, actually) equipped with a pool of sharks, they all leave once Kananga has his prisoners tied up. Kananga hoists Bond and Solitaire over the pool of sharks with intent to lower them to their doom. In a truly ridiculous gadget moment, Bond's watch turns into a mini-buzz saw that he uses to sever his bonds. No where in the film are we told the thing could do that, so it's truly a deus ex machina twist. Bond quickly swings free, puts the big, fat, harmless guy who's the only other villain in the room out of commission, and turns to face Kananga - now armed with a knife. Kotto is no more threatening armed that he was unarmed, and Bond makes pretty short work of him. In a truly silly bit, Bond forces Kananga to swallow a compressed air pellet and he literally floats to the ceiling and explodes! You just know that's gotta hurt!
We're seeing the end in sight now, but a Bond movies not over until the last henchman bites the dust. Bond and Solitaire board a train for a bit of R & R but unbeknownst to them, the jovial Tee-Hee has stowed away on board. The ensuing fight between Tee-Hee and Bond in Bond's train compartment is actually fairly decent. It's just far too little, and at this point far too late to jazz this movie up all that much. The larger question is why these henchmen are so darn loyal. Those super-villains will drop you in a piranha tank at the first sign of a screw-up, yet even after they're dead and gone, their henchmen are still out trying to kill Bond. I don't understand it. If the villain's dead, the evil plans become a cropper, and you're still standing, I'd think it is just be best to update the resume and move on. Those henchmen would sure live longer if they did.
It's kind of a pity at this point that we have to pick on Moore as much as we have. After his first two disasters, he did go on to make much, much better movies. To further talk the poor goof up, I'll argue that this movie ended up such a failure because the filmmakers were not willing to trust Moore with the franchise. It's painfully obvious that the script was initially written around stunts and locations, with the actual interstitial Bond material linking them to be filled in at a later date. You can almost imagine the producers thinking that they could film 90% of the movie with stuntmen and extras before actually having to find someone to play Bond. Once the Bond was found, they conspired to not let him say enough to screw anything up. Live And Let Die was oddly conceived as a Bond movie without a role for Bond, and this complete lack of attention to characterization was devastating to it's success.
Now that the release of the new Bond film, Die Another Day, is less than two months off, old Bond diehards such as myself can't help but be seized by a combination of optimism and nostalgia. While I have to admit that I am quite pessimistic about the quality of Die Another Day, its up-coming release has tempted me to try to follow through on a long-standing desire of mine. I've always wanted to wile away the occassional hour in recording my feelings about the entire Bond series. Which films are classics? Which mediocre? And which are outright disasters?
I thought that the most pleasurable way to approach the films was by means of a countdown. Starting from the bottom will provide cautionary tales about unsatisfactory ways of approaching the Bondian universe and help us to appreciate the classics all the more. In addition we want to be fair to the less than exemplary films in the franchise. Jaundicing the palate with the richest fare won't allow us to appreciate the more homely charms of the weaker entries in the franchise. As a precursor to the latest Bond, I want to try to utilize this blog to step through the franchise. We'll begin with the most lamentable Bond and work our way up. I don't want to give the game away at the outset, but I will admit that working backwards will better my chances of at least covering all of Brosnan's work before the release of his new film. I can't promise, indeed won't promise, to get to #1 before November 22, but I do hope to get to Brosnan's best film by that date.
My criteria are, of course, of the utmost subjectivity. As a long time Bond fan, I think that the most remarkable thing about the franchise films is their rewatchability. Of couse the serious students of feeh-ulm are not going to admit that the Bond films necessarily merit repeat viewings, but the best in the series continue to be exciting and spectacular even after being watched again and again. Consequently any ranking I, as one who has seen each film numerous times, may propose depends in large part on the fact that I'd still enjoy seeing the film one more time. Obviously, I've seen the older films more frequently than the newer ones, so I'll try to skew the rankings accordingly.
I would also proudly call myself a Fleming purist. Ian Fleming is co-equal with Arthur Conan Doyle in creating a fictional character so immensly popular that that creation is literally a household word. Let me mince no words about such an amazing feat. Snooty, pretentious, literary types can look down their noses all they want at such astoundingly successful popular literature, but that success implies an immense and enviable talent. A Bond film's fidelity to its source material is well correlated with its entertainment value. Futhermore, films not particularly faithful to Fleming's original stories are often very good at capturing the spirit of Fleming's work, and this is also a major plus. I'll stress that some quite good Bond films have little, if anything, to do with Fleming's work, while some of the stinkier movies incorporate quite a bit of Fleming source material. Thus, I won't try to be religious about Fleming's original texts during this countdown, but I think it undeniable that adherence to Fleming's material is a much better predictor of excellence than abandonment of same.
I've also decided to omit two Bond movie from this countdown. For those who know about it, the reasons for my omission of Casino Royale should be clear. Casino Royale was a comedy made independently of Eon studios - the ones responsible for the Bond franchise. It stars comedic actors like David Niven, Peter Sellars, and Woody Allen. It actually contains a surprising amount of Fleming material, but as a spoof it is so totally distinct from anyone's conception of a Bond movie that it is not at all comparable to any film in our countdown. Someday I may try to weigh its merits and demerits in a distinct review, but for now we'll pass over this particular oddity.
I've also concluded that I just can't fairly add the first Bond movie, Dr. No, to the countdown. The first film in the Bond series is almost completely lacking in the elements that were to feature prominently in later films. It's only true action sequences are a couple of very dated car chases and a minor dust-up with a turncoat chauffeur. Surprisingly, I can't even give it Bond purist points for brown-nosing venerated Fleming source material. Not only are several later films far more faithful to the original Fleming novels than Dr. No is, but this screen version discards some of the most exciting parts of Fleming's book! Dr. No's initiation of the Bond franchise certainly demands celebration, but when compared to the later films it's just not very exciting. A comprehensive discussion of this movie probably involves an in-depth sociological study of how Connery's charisma touched just enough early-60's filmgoers to make a second movie financially attractive to Eon studios. I shudder to approach such a complicated social study at this point, so I'll just respectfully doff my hat to Dr. No at this juncture for initiating so much future movie-going pleasure.
Before starting the countdown, I'll talley the Bond films in chronological order. For those that want to forecast my rantings, use this list to tick off my reviews as they're posted.
Dr. No (not ranked)
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
Casino Royale (not ranked)
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live And Let Die
The Man With The Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
Never Say Never Again
A View To A Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence To Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World Is Not Enough
An early turning point in the James Bond movie franchise was reached when Sean Connery issued his most adamant refusal to date concerning his continuation in the role that made him a star. He had given up the role earlier only to be lured back by a big, beefy paycheck. While he returned many years later to plague us in a sub-par independent Bond film, his final abandonment of the role in the early 70's lead the makers of the Bond films to seek a permanent replacement. The machinations of that search are only of academic interest. Suffice it to say, said machinations lead to the selection of one Roger Moore to step into the Bond shoes.
Old men such as myself remember that the Roger Moore vs. Sean Connery debate once raged red-hot. Now that two new Bonds have brought their own interpretations and controversies to the role, that ancient argument becomes more and more otiose. In fact, as the years have passed, even a Bond purist such as myself has come to look on the Moore era as a Golden Age, not just for Bond, but also for action films in general. To Moore’s credit he never dared try to ape Connery’s portrayal, and consequently his performances took the franchise in a totally unique direction. He possessed a fine sense of humor, and as his tenure unfolded the Bond films became more and more comedic. This is in fact the reason that his name tended toward mud among Bond purists, but once again in retrospect I have come to believe that this also ameliorated the main gripe I have with Connery’s portrayal. I’ve always felt that Fleming never meant to portray Bond as a hedonistic rake, but Connery always had a tendency to veer in that direction. Moore, on the other hand, could womanize and wink at us at the same time and so sanitize some of the more callus aspects of the movie Bond persona. In the sense that Connery’s self-centered womanizing is not true to Fleming’s Bond at all, Moore can’t be slighted be slighted by purists for going with the established Connery flow while humbly stage whispering: “This is all a jolly lark. None of these beautiful girls would shag an old British twit like me.”
Paeans to Moore aside, however, his second foray into the world of Bond is a truly tedious yawn fest that easily earns the bottom spot in our countdown. While The Man With The Golden Gun doesn't quite become actively irritating, it commits the cardinal sin for a Bond film - it is completely unmemorable in practically every respect. In fact, even though I’ve seen it many times over the years, I can still barely remember what happens from viewing to viewing. I was forced to rent the thing once again just this week to be honest in my description of what transpires. Furthermore, the primary problem with Moore's portrayal in general always stemmed from the fact that the audience's tolerance for overt comedy had to be bought by pure larger-than-life spectacle. When an outing by Moore lacked spectacle, as this one most surely does, the tending-towards-juvenile humor in his films tended to just make them even more insufferable.
In fairness to the "artisans" that made this lamentable film, its failure can't be totally blamed on abandoning the plot of Fleming's original novel. Fleming's The Man With The Golden Gun was still in the rough draft stage when he died, and the draft of the book was lightly fleshed-out by some ghostwriters that worked for his publishers. Consequently, Fleming's last novel is also sadly his worst. Arguably it is incomplete. In all honesty I don't think I would have counted it a favorite even had Fleming lived to polish and complete it, but as it stands it is very, as opposed to mildly, disappointing. The bits that made it to the screen were the name of the man with the golden gun, Francisco Scaramanga, and the fact that said man has three nipples (what the heck was Fleming thinking?). In addition, the story of Scaramanga's life growing up in the circus that is given in the book is recounted by Christopher Lee in the movie. As mundane as the Scaramanga of the book was in the scheme of things he was presented as a vicious and savage killer, so he was he least physically threatening. I think that it was unfortunate for the film that this characterization never made it to the screen.
The plot of the movie version of The Man With The Golden Gun is too complex for its own good. My countdown will make clear that I have nothing against complex Bond plots, but this one verges on incoherence. I'll attempt to encase the rampant confusion in the smallest possible nutshell. A golden bullet literally graced with Bond's number arrives at Secret Service headquarters, implying that Bond is a target for the eponymous man with a golden gun that's loaded with golden bullets, Francisco Scaramanga - an assassin that earns a meehl-yun dollars for each successful hit. Bond has to abandon his search for a missing energy scientist to track down the faceless assassin before he himself is terminated. A bullet recovered from a belly dancer's belly button (yes, you read that right) leads Bond to the maker of Scaramanga's ammunition and subsequently to his mistress. The mistress tells Bond that Scaramanga will show up at a local hot spot that night. Scaramanga does show up, but only to assassinate the energy scientist Bond was searching for at the start of the movie.
The energy scientist was developing some kind of energy cell/McGuffin that would solve the "energy crisis" by efficiently using solar energy. As an aside, this is where the plot takes a swerve into incomprehensibility. Apparently the scientist was working for one Hi Fat, a wealthy Bangkok industrialist. And by working for we mean what? Was he was paid to develop this solar cell for money in an effort to freely market a source of inexhaustible energy? The movie claims the scientist was killed because he was defecting with the solar cell. Defecting from what? He was freely working for the guy to develop the McGuffin. What right does British intelligence have to his invention anyway? It seems that Hi Fat would be legally entitled to the rights to the solar cell given his funding of the research. Hi Fat, however, is the inevitably evil capitalist so he apparently keeps million dollar assassins on the payroll to whack disgruntled employees rather than high-priced lawyers to simply sue their keisters off. Some of my Bondian fan material claims that Hi Fat is an agent of the ChiComs, but I dare you to watch this intently enough to infer such a thing.
So, stipulating that Hi Fat is evil, let's begrudge Bond's pursuit of him to Bangkok. Bond thinks it a possibility that Hi Fat hired Scaramanga without knowing his appearance, and tries to impersonate him. The attempt's a bust however and Bond is lucky to escape death when found out. When Bond's escape threatens Scaramanga with exposure, he ices Hi Fat and escapes with the solar cell. Scaramanga's mistress, desperate to escape from him, visits Bond and admits she sent the bullet to headquarters to entice him into liberating her by eliminating Scaramanga. Bond agrees to do this on the condition that she deliver the solar cell to him. Said attempt results in her death and Bond's pursuit or Scaramanga to his lair in the South China Sea. Bond prevails in a far too mannered duel and escapes with the solar cell and an egregiously extraneous female lead that I've been trying to avoid even discussing up until now.
So what good, if any, can be made of this mess? The Man With The Golden Gun teeters on the edge of respectability solely due to a starring turn by Christopher Lee as Scaramanga. Lee has made a career from being the very exemplar of screen villainy. He's won a cult following from portraying the very embodiment of charismatic evil in his turns as Dracula, and he's starred as the pre-Fleming's Dr. No "yellow peril" villain par excellence as Fu Manchu. Lee's turn as Bond adversary should have been a high point of the series. Tragically, it was not to be as Lee is cast as nothing more than a highly paid hired gun. His natural charisma and charm certainly tends to class up the film, but Scaramanga is still the weakest villain in the entire series. Scaramanga comes across mainly as a soft-spoken, well-dressed, and well-mannered professional. When Bond lands at Scaramanga's hideaway for the climax of the film, Lee exudes all the menace of a British gentleman hosting a weekend golf outing. On the whole, Scaramanga is as menacing as Tony Blair.
To further cripple Lee as a villain, truly infantile psychosexual motivations are attributed to his character. I won't dwell on title sequences during this countdown, but get a load of some of the lyrics of the theme song:
He has a powerful weapon He charges a million a shot
and
His eye may be on you or me Who will he bang? We shall see
While chanteuse Lulu belts out these lines, we see shots of a woman stroking the barrel of the titular golden gun. As you must admit, it's all very subtle and nuanced. What makes it truly absurd, however, is the fact that these themes are fully vetted in the film. After Scaramanga assassinates the defecting scientist, he returns to his boat and rubs the barrel of his gun all over his mistress! This is not even dime store Freudianism, but rather garage sale Freudianism. If the filmmakers had gone all out in portraying Scaramanga as some kind of sexual psychopath, maybe this less than discrete subtext could have worked. As it is, however, the whole imputation comes across as sophomoric and yucky.
Interestingly enough, I have to admit that Maud Adams' performance as Scaramanga's mistress Andrea Anders and the scenes that she's in are the high points of the film. As I mentioned in the plot summary, Anders, in trying to escape from Scaramanga, tries to set Bond against him. When Bond first meets up with her after she has picked up ammunition for Scaramanga's gun, he proceeds to treat her quite roughly in an attempt to get a lead on the assassin. Why she doesn't spill the beans here is a big mystery, but nevertheless Moore is really at his steeliest in this scene. No one can sanction the ill treatment of women but Bond thinks that some madman is out to kill him, so he can hardly stand on niceties. Later in the movie when Anders comes to Bond's hotel room to finally 'fess up to sending the bullet to headquarters, Adams comes across as legitimately frightened and desperate enough to do anything to escape from Scaramanga. Here again Moore's Bond, at his most hard-hearted and caddish, demands that she retrieve the McGuffin from Scaramanga as a precondition to his protecting her while simultaneously accepting her proffered favors. The attempt to retrieve the McGuffin ends in her death at the hands of Scaramanga. This is some surprisingly powerful stuff, and really makes you wish that they had centered the movie on Adams' character instead of the lamentable Mary Goodnight.
I've been putting off discussion of Mary Goodnight, but dealing with her eventually is a necessity. In Fleming's book, Goodnight was actually Bond's secretary. In the film, she is just a less than competent employee of British intelligence based in Hong Kong. In the film Goodnight is the "final woman" - the female character that Bond ends up in bed with at the end. Not content with sinking the performance of Christopher Lee, the screenwriters also saw fit to sabotage the starring turn of Britt Ekland as Goodnight. Ms. Ekland is (in my totally objective opinion) undoubtedly gorgeous, and honestly not at all a bad actress. For perhaps the only time in the Bond series, however, the female lead is scripted purely as comic relief. Goodnight serves mainly as a running gag tastelessly based around coitus interuptus. Bond promises to meet her for a romantic rendezvous again and again only to be sidetracked by the various lame action sequences in the film. The final humiliation takes place when Bond forces her to hide in a closet while the above mentioned discussion between him and Anders about stealing the McGuffin from Scaramanga takes place. To embarrass Ekland further, at the denouement Goodnight turns into a complete bubblehead who nearly kills Bond by accidentally firing an energy beam into the McGuffin Bond is trying to extract by bumping into the trigger with her ass. Poor Ms. Ekland ends up the victim of possibly the most insulting scripting concerning a female character in the entire Bond saga.
What about henchman? We know about Red Grant, Oddjob, and Jaws. Herve Villechaize, the future Tattoo of Fantasy Island, portrays Scaramanga’s henchman, Nick Knack! Let me make clear that I wouldn't for a moment begrudge Mr. Villechaize's his roles in film or TV. God bless him for going out and following his dream to become an actor. This movie, however, is just totally unworthy of his aspirations. In The Man With The Golden Gun, midgets are so humorous that their appearance must be accompanied by "comical" musical hooks. Nothing is funnier in this universe than a midget running out of a small hiding place and kicking the protagonist in the keister. Could Villechaize's appearance as henchman have worked? Frankly I think it doubtful that it could have, but at least the screenwriters could have tried to imply a fierce intelligence on Nick Knack’s part. It's the only plausible way he could be the least bit threatening. Instead his appearance here is nothing more than even more unwanted comic relief, of a quite insensitive kind. I just pray that Mr. Villechaize got a big fat paycheck that let him live comfortably, because he certainly deserved it for his appearance here.
What about locations? No sensible American would set foot outside the country while we have Bond films to showcase the classiest of foreign locales (or for any reason whatsoever, now that I think about it). Even those misguided Americans itching to travel, however, would be put off the locales featured in The Man With The Golden Gun. The bulk of the film is announced to take place in Bangkok. I certainly don't want to insult Bangkok residents (as if they care what I think), but the portions of Bangkok on display in this movie are dreary in the extreme. Totally third world conditions are featured with people washing in muddy rivers off decaying piers, vendors hawking fruit and trinkets in the streets, and wild animals running loose. I'm also sad to say that the Hong Kong locales come across as similarly seamy, even though the filmmakers could have most likely found a host of beautiful sites to film around there even 30 years ago. As for Beirut? Its time has long come and gone, but there's nothing particularly exotic about Bond's trip there to track down a bullet used in one of Scaramanga's earlier assassinations.
But of course any number of scripting and acting problems can be forgiven in a Bond film if the action set pieces are truly amazing and memorable. As you have certainly guessed, however, this film is practically devoid of memorable stunts. The notorious pre-credits Bond film teaser, sometimes the high point of the film, is painfully weak here. It's not even clear what is happening until after the credits are done and the people involved in the teaser are described. While Scaramanga and his mistress are being served drinks by Nick Knack, a creepy Mafia-esque goombah comes ashore and is soon paid by Nick Knack to assassinate Scaramanga. Scaramanga leads the hit man into his on-premises funhouse (!), and gets the drop on him before the credits roll. Bond is not present in the flesh at all, and only appears in the form of a wax dummy Scaramanga apparently keeps around for target practice. While there's no reason a Bond film couldn't be good without featuring Bond in the teaser, the generally forgettable quality of The Man With The Golden Gun makes the teaser just feel like a lost opportunity. Furthermore, in retrospect it sinks in that Nick Knack apparently contracts for Scaramanga's death just to keep Scaramanga on his toes! Yes, it's exactly like Inspector Clousseau telling Cato to attack him all the time! What was a funny joke in the Pink Panther movies is something we are expected to take utterly seriously here. The only memorable bit in the whole teaser is the three nipples Scaramanga has on display at the very outset.
When Bond tracks down the belly dancer now in possession of one of Scaramanga's golden bullets in Beirut, a truly brutal brawl ensues between Bond and three nameless goons. This is the best bit in the whole movie, and Moore in particular plays it meaner than he ever has by brutally introducing one of the goon's head to the wall over and over. The only unsatisfying aspect concerns the identity of his attackers. Just who the hell are they? They are never named, never associated with the movie's villains, and just seemingly follow Bond into the dancer's dressing room to attack him just for the fun of it. Let that be a lesson for anyone wanting to visit Beirut, I guess. People in bars will attack you for no discernible reason whatsoever.
Another set piece that seems particularly dated today concerns Bond's trip to school. After a tussle more comical than thrilling with a pair of Sumo wrestlers at Hi Fat's compound, Bond is knocked out by what was probably a very embarrassed Herve Villechaize. Hi Fat then has Bond taken to some kind of martial arts academy that he owns. The intent is apparently to force Bond to fight student after student at the school until one of them kills him. Once again, Bond is unconscious so if they wanted to get rid of him they could have drilled him and dropped them in the river. That would have been my plan, but I'm not a nefarious Chinese industrialist so I guess we need to put this down to "different strokes" and all. Bond does engage in a somewhat decent martial arts bout with one of the school's students, but given the availability today of high quality martial arts fare like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon it just doesn't pack the punch it might have once had. And unable to leave reasonably well enough alone, the film immediately lapses into juvenile humor. Bond flees the school followed by the students and runs into his ally Lieutenant Hip outside (good luck that!). Hip's accompanied by his two nieces, wearing what resemble Catholic schoolgirl outfits, and they proceed to beat the tar out of the martial arts students trailing Bond! This is indeed as ridiculous as it sounds, even though Hip assures us "Their dad owns a karate school". The fact that Moore just stands around grinning like an idiot doesn't add to the suspense factor either. And, if you’re thinking it surely couldn't get even more ridiculous, you're wrong! After putting down the entire martial arts school, Hip and his nieces hop in their waiting car and drive off without Bond! After ineffectually running after the car waving his arms, Bond is forced to take to the water in a nearby boat to escape his now recovered pursuers. This results in a very much less than thrilling boat chase down some frankly less-than-hygienic looking Bangkok canals. The only positive is that the chase ends quickly enough to avoid becoming tedious.
At this point, there's little time left in the movie for actual excitement, and the filmmakers all but rule out the possibility of same by inserting a car chase. Now while there's no doubt that the car chase is a staple of the action genre, I've always found that they require a great deal of imagination to be at all interesting. At their core, they're just images of cars careening around at high speeds. The type of car, the good-guy's car, the bad guy's car, which cars explode spectacularly at the slightest impact - these are the only rearrangable elements in a rather limited palette of events that could result from a high speed pursuit. And to be honest, I'm getting to the age at which I've pretty much seen the entire palette. I can still find excitement in some particularly well-choreographed bit, but the routine inclusion of car chases in action films has long since left me cold.
The car chase in The Man With The Golden Gun is a particularly bland and generic version of the set piece. Scaramanga kidnaps Goodnight and Bond is, as is unfortunately typical in these things, forced to steal a car to pursue. What results is two cars driving rather rapidly around Bangkok, anemically pursued by some crummy overseas-model police cars. This is made even less interesting due to the fact that the cars involved in the chase aren't even particularly notable. Bond steals an AMC Hornet (?!), and when was AMC ever known for glamour cars? I couldn't identify Scaramanga's car, but even if it was some prestige big-engine model it still screams early 70's American styling. Even if both these models were the finest that American engineering had to offer at the time, they are truly no more stylish than the second-hand '79 Buick Skyhawk I drove in college (a damn fine car by the way!). Furthermore, even if you have an obsession with cars made in the early 70's by bankrupt American auto companies, any enjoyment of this chase is totally quashed by the presence of the dreadful Sheriff J. W. Pepper. Pepper is a redneck police officer caricature left over from Moore's first film, Live And Let Die. Shopping for cars in Bangkok (?), Pepper is sitting in the car that Bond steals to pursue Scaramanga. His presence has made for the most obnoxious and odious non-comic relief in the series. Pepper spends the entire chase going on about the "brown pointy-heads", i.e. Thais, getting in the way. I'm sure these racist diatribes must have made this a box office draw when it was released in Asia. I will point out the interesting bit that involves Bond's car rotating 360 degrees in the air as he drives it over a ruined bridge during the pursuit. Again, however, let me stress that this is interesting rather than exciting. Never has so much time, effort, and risk been wasted on a movie stunt. I'll also point out the rather absurd end to this chase that involves Scaramanga driving his car into a garage, fitting it with wings, and literally flying away. If anything that had led up to this had been the least bit exciting they could be forgiven for this, but as it is the escape just adds to the overwhelming silliness of what probably was the showcase stunt sequence.
So all we have left is the infiltration of Scaramanga's hideout by Bond. To be fair to the film, Scaramanga's island hideout is one of the mushroom-shaped islands that must feature prominently in South China Sea and is a truly beautiful setting. His actually lair is the usual swooshing steel doors combined with steel catwalks that appear time and time again in the series, and is nothing special. In fact, it is pitifully undermanned. A pretty large room full of "scientific" energy storage cells is overseen by one man, and Goodnight makes short work of him. The faceless henchman is knocked into a vat of liquid helium (ouch!), which causes the whole hideaway to explode. After Scaramanga banters politely about how he thinks he and Bond are both members of the same profession, and after some less polite denials on the part of Bond, a duel ensues with both Bond and Scaramanga armed and back-to-back. To make a long story short, it's back into the funhouse from the pre-credits teaser. It's no more exciting the second time, but you still may be surprised to learn that it's Bond that gets the drop on Scaramanga this time. All that's left is for Herve Villechaize to be humiliated one more time as he stows away on the boat in which Bond and Goodnight escape the island. Illogically attempting to attack and kill a fully-grown man, he ends up locked in a suitcase and run up the ship's mast.
After sifting through the wreckage of this film, it's hard to conceive of a scenario whereby this movie would have worked. Certainly there is interesting material in the attempt of Anders to escape from Scaramanga, and much more could have been done with this sub-plot. What if Scaramanga, instead of being a stylish bon vivant, had been instead the brutal, homicidal thug of Fleming's book? Perhaps if the film had centered on Anders pleas for protection and her and Bond's subsequent flight from a murderous psychopath, this film could have made for suspenseful viewing. But would the fans of the Bond films accepted such a small-scale plot? At this point in the series, they probably wouldn't have. Unfortunately, it seems that small scale may have been endemic to this entire set-up. After all if the filmmakers really want us to look upon Scaramanga and Bond as two sides of the same coin and co-equals in the same profession, then their battle is nothing more exciting than office politics. The unavoidable fact is that the shootout between Bond and Scaramanga has no more dramatic resonance than a competition between A T & T telemarketers trying to out-hawk each other in long-distance sales.
