This is the first Bond in the series starring my childhood favorite Bond, Roger Moore. Will I sustain this opinion? We will have to see. I am not making any judgments until I have completed re-watching the entire series of Bond Films. I find it interesting that today, I just watched “American Hustle”, and in that film, the Beatles song “Live and Let Die” was featured prominently at one point, which just so happens to be the title and soundtrack of this film. They played the music from that song throughout this film, and honestly, I found it to be a bit distracting. Personally, I would have preferred the original James Bond theme music as the backdrop. Unfortunately, Q was not in this one, but Bond did get a couple of gadgets including a magnetic watch and an air compressing shark gun.
There were a couple of Bond-style chase scenes, one included a two-story bus, another was an all on ground plane chase scene. He plane-jacked a plane with the instructor still in it, at the end of the chase he quips, “same time tomorrow”, with her plane in pieces. He was also in an extended boat chase scene through the Louisiana bayou. He was being chased by both the bad guys and by the law.
At one point in the film, he orders a bourbon with no ice for a drink, which is a departure from the norm. His love interest was played by the very beautiful Jane Seymour. I found the plot to be rather boring for a bond film and will not go into the details. To today’s standards, there were some downright funny fight scenes and one in particular, the bad guy eats an air pellet and ends up blowing up like a balloon, then exploding. That was comical and Bond quips, “he always did have an inflated ego” or something to that effect. These one-liners are part of the reason I always liked James Bond films. This wasn’t a terrible start for Roger Moore in the series, and hopefully, he will only get better from here.
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