Yours truly is glad to be back with you for our survey of 007 films. Today we explore the transition to Roger Moore, which may have not been the low point of the series, but on its way to it.
Roger Moore's first Bond movie is definitely one of the more politically incorrect ones, with seemingly the entire African-American community of Harlem, as well as New Orleans, conspiring against him. As I understand it, this follows in the tradition of Fleming's novel, and I'm glad that the filmmakers had the courage to do this. However, a closer following to the original plot might have been a bit of an improvement. In the novel, the crime boss, Mr. Big, has connections to Soviet intelligence and is smuggling 17th century gold coins from English territories in the Caribbean. In the film, Mr. Big is simply planning to give away two tons of heroin in the U.S. in order to put his competitors out of business, creating a monopoly for himself, and increase the number of addicts. The problems with the latter are two-fold. One is that it gives no justification for MI6 presence in the U.S. Why would British intelligence care about drug trafficking in America? Secondly, as one who studies economics, I am offended that the screenwriters would think that this plan might ever work. It suffers from the fallacy of "
predatory pricing" in which one firm will attempt to lower the price of its good in order to force other firms out of the market, and once this occurs will be able to increase prices due to having no competition. However, a firm attempting this strategy will lose money if it is selling at a price under the cost of production. Giving your product away would definitely qualify and it's not as if giving it away is cheap. The reason prohibited drugs are so expensive is because of the risks associated with production and distribution. Dealers will not work for free, so Mr. Big has to have the cash to pay his employees without getting any revenue from their labor. And even if he is able to put his competition out of business (which is not likely to be the case since the monetary revenues are so much higher than the monetary costs in this industry due to prohibition), it doesn't mean that new competitors won't establish themselves after he raises his prices. So not only is it not the case that he will have anything more than a very short-lived monopoly, it is likely that it would be so short that he won't even recoup the costs of giving heroin away in the first place! (And this isn't the only time a Bond villain will attempt to use such a bonehead strategy: Max Zorin tries to do something similar in
A View to a Kill).
Ok, so the plot makes no sense, but what about the rest of it? I will say that the characters are much more interesting and colorful than many others in Bond films. Baron Samedi has attained legend status in the Bond canon, partially both for his mystical black magic persona and apparent immortality. Not only does Bond have to deal with him, but the very scary Tee Hee who sports a prosthetic limb with a two-pronged claw at the end. (It's too bad that their boss, Mr. Big, has an idiotic business plan.) Solitaire is not just a Bond girl that happens to be present and female, with few distinguishing characteristics. She is a tarot card reader and presented as somewhat of a quasi-virgin. They all interact with Bond in what some might see to be his most dangerous environment yet: being a "honky" in predominantly black parts of town. So these elements (villains, Bond girl, "exotic" location) are accounted for and satisfactory. How about the new Bond? He seems suave enough and even charming in a certain way. He also has the Bond-ish characteristic of unashamedly enjoying bourgeois luxuries. And yet the Moore-Bond disease rears its ugly head: he is a dirty man (he tricks the quasi-virgin to get her into bed), he is captured but not killed multiple times (one wonders why such sadistic sociopaths would not want to enjoy watching Bond's demise, consequently allowing him to make escape), he doesn't bring the toughness to the character that Sir Connery does (how many fights can you imagine Moore winning?), and he embodies my least favorite thing about Bond: the corny puns. All that being said, this is a fast-paced Bond film, with every scene pushing into the next and no long breaks in the action so that the evil plot can be revealed.
Live and Let Die is above the average Moore movie, but not the best of what 007 has to offer.
