Live and Let Fly
[spoilers follow]
So I reach the end of Roger Moore, or the beginning, depending on how you look at it, with some peobple's idea of his best film. Some also criticise it because it's Bond's "blaxploitation" movie, so we can ask whether either thing is true.
First, the black thing. Is it racist? Well, surprisingly, it's probably no worse than any other Moore film. Or any Bond film really. They're inherently racist, in ways that are not always fully obvious even to us today. In Live and Let Die, the blacks are the villains, which is not a bad thing, but they're charismatic and clever, while nearly all the white characters are at least a bit dim, ranging to off the charts dumb in the crackers' case.
But Rosie, Bond's first black shag, is a really poor character and is offed shortly after Bond himself threatens to kill her five minutes after banging her. And worse, Solitaire, Jane Seymour in absolutely stunning form, is white, captured and held against her will by the blacks. Worse, she "protects" her virginity against her black bf by saying she needs it to power her card-divining then gives it up for the first white cock on offer.
So yeah, that's not great. Otherwise, the black characters are not handled too badly. There's not too much jive, not too much "aw shucks lawdy, mister honky". Really, the black villain is urbane and smart. Except he has the worst case of "why don't you just shoot him?" ever. He seems intent on feeding Bond to animals.
The voodoo stuff is quite cool. It gives the whole piece a sort of spooky, lowslung vibe. The plot is just something something heroin something something we'll all be bbbbbbillionaires, but who cares about plot after TMWTGG, which was all over the place. Just having something coherent and tonally strong works for me. The script is quite good -- decent jokes, decent characters, it's like they tried hard to give Moore scope to work. After the calamity of the last new Bond, I suppose they had to pull out all the stops. The action is very low-key. We've really entered the days when Bond films were more thriller, less action, and possibly better for it. There's that famous boat chase and that has some good moments but that fucken sheriff... Okay, look, that shit was all the rage in the 1970s. Cracker sheriffs were 10 a penny, and some redneck going "booooooy" was to laugh at on its own. But it just grinds now. I didn't so much as snigger. IYKWIM aityd.
So Solitaire is a pisspoor character and I didn't get her at all. Or like her. And the whole no-sex slave thing is icky. And she goes from ice cool Tarot queen to, I don't know, girlfriend, and it kind of ruins the film.
So I'm going to say B/C. I'd probably say more C. It was okay, some spicy elements, some nicely suspenseful bits, some quite humourous bits that weren't out of place. Moore was at his best. But that Solitaire character is such a drag and it can be really hard to love a film that just couldn't play today. Although yeah, you could see Tarantino remake it.
posted by Dr Zen @ 8:03 pm
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