MovieChat Forums > Live and Let Die (1973) Discussion > A villain with a reasonable goal...

A villain with a reasonable goal...


Never gave this film a full-viewing until recently, I always only seemed to see it in scatterings here and there, but loved the theme song and have listened to it for years.

Plot wise, I think this is probably one of Moore's best Bond films. I actually really liked the idea of building up a secluded poppy field and then giving the heroin away for free on the streets to run the competition out of business. It's funny because it's the CIA who is the most troubled at this occurrence (because they were involved in similar schemes), with MI6 only worried about their missing/killed agents.

Out of all the Bond films, I think this was probably one of the most reasonable, smart, and tactical villains with a very achievable goal. It was neither over the top nor designed to disrupt geopolitics on a global scale like some other villainous schemes. It was also a relatively tight-knit operation, too, without a whole lot of extraneous, ridiculous, over-the-top components involved.

It's a shame Moore's Bond was portrayed as so incompetent in this film, though. He should have died like ten times and was captured one too many times for my liking. I rather liked The Man With The Golden Gun far better for the fact that other than being captured and brought to the karate school (which was kind of dumb), Bond was the one that was being the aggressor most of the time. He was written to be much better form than how he was portrayed in Live and Let Die.

But man, this film's theme song and locations were great. It's just a shame that Bond getting captured was daft enough to be parody (and probably why it was mocked to the degree it was, along with Moonraker, in the Austin Powers films).

reply

Yeah this one was always my favorite when I was a little boy and it certainly is up there in my list to this day. The plot is cool and makes some sense, and even though Kananga goes out like a punk, at least it's memorable, with the guy being inflated to death and all. Plus, we have a great cast of villains: Kananga, clawhand guy, Kananga with the disguise, and voodoo man. And Whisper.

Good Bond movie.

reply

Plus, we have a great cast of villains: Kananga, clawhand guy, Kananga with the disguise, and voodoo man. And Whisper.


A black guy with blackface... that was ingenious. They could never get away with something like that today.

Also, I can't recall but I think Live and Let Die had the most named henchmen? It seemed like Bond was always facing off against a number of sub-bosses in the film.

reply

A black character wearing blackface! That's a funny way of putting it.

Yeah that's true about the henchmen. You also had the cab driver who was in New York and New Orleans.

reply

It's just a shame that Bond getting captured was daft enough to be parody (and probably why it was mocked to the degree it was, along with Moonraker, in the Austin Powers films).

I think the precedent for that in the Austin Powers films was already well set before Moore's Bond came along. e.g. The "I'll just leave you to get cut in half by this laser" in Goldfinger and the "I'll just leave you to be torched by this rocket's propulsion flames" in YOLT.

In general I'd say Austin Powers parodies YOLT and Thunderball more closely than anything else.

reply

In general I'd say Austin Powers parodies YOLT and Thunderball more closely than anything else.


Oh yeah, there were definitely some stupid moments in all the Bond films that Austin Powers parodied, but Bond getting captured in Live and Let Die was recidivist, even for Bond's standards. But the Austin Power's sequence where they were being lowered slowly into the water with the laser sharks was pulled directly from Live and Let Die, including the scene where Scott tells Dr. Evil "I'll just go up to my room and get a gun and we can just shoot them". It's the first thing I thought about when Kananga tells Whisper to slow down the pulley system being lowered into the tank. At that point I was thinking, "Why not just shoot them already?". From what I recall, he was probably the most forgiving of all the villains.

Thunderball's laser cutting scene was definitely silly, but also memorable. Same with You Only Live Twice; but in Live and Let Die he was supposed to be shot in the back alley, he was supposed to be killed by the snake, he was supposed to be assassinated in the poppy fields, he was supposed to be thrown out of the plane, he was supposed to be thrown into the alligator pit, he was then supposed to be lowered (slowly) into the shark feeding tank. I feel like I may be missing one.

Still, it's a cool movie but the Bond-capture moments and over-the-top ways they try to kill him was really something.

reply

Laser cutting scene is in Goldfinger. Then a thousand times again in parodies, magic shows, etc. Iconic gold.

reply

What about You only live twice and View to a kill? Those were reasonable goals for the villain to accomplish

reply

YOLT was 100% camp with rockets hijacking space capsules and capable of lifting from the earth and landing without refueling. Spy Who Loved Me used the same plot, but in more reasonable manner.

reply

There was no space capsules in The Spy who loved me. How was that like anything in YOLT?

reply

Space capsules in YOLT, nuclear submarines in SWLM. The villain hijacked them in order to start nuclear war between USA and Soviet Union. Same plot, same director.

reply

And two of the best Bond films. On rewatch, YOLT soared in my ranking.

reply

Better than Moonraker?

reply

You're right

reply

The ones about starting nuclear war never really made a lot of sense to me because everyone loses in the end. It's a Pyrrhic or M.A.D., resolution that doesn't really see the villain come out on top if everything goes under. Opposite, of say, the plot in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which was actually very realistic -- guy releasing a man-made virus around certain undisclosed parts of the world and then selling world governments the antidote? That's believable. Heck, they're doing it right now in real-life!

A View To A Kill also wasn't very reasonable... he was going to sink Silicon Valley? Ehh... those kind of plots are kind of too over-the-top to be realistic.

The Man With The Golden Gun, however, was VERY realistic. In fact, that was a pure espionage grift on the part of Scaramanga; selling a high-tech weapon to the highest bidder? PMCs and defense contractors currently do that in real life.

reply

While I agree that Kananga's dastardly scheme is relatively normal, the notion of the Prime Minister of a foreign country pretending to be a totally separate individual in charge of a Harlem street gang is pretty silly even by the standards of Bond films. I'm sure Kananga could have bought off the leader of a gang and incorporated said gang into his operations.

reply