This ninth James Bond film, and the first to star Roger Moore as 007, has one of the best action set pieces in the whole series — the speedboat chase through the bayous in Louisiana.  It’s beautiful, exciting and punctuated with some truly impressive practical stunts, of the sort we’re never likely to see again in this age of digital cinema.

Jane Seymour as Solitaire makes a surprisingly alluring Bond Girl.  She’s always been a strikingly attractive woman, but she developed a sort of prissy persona as a grande dame of television dramas.  Here, at age 22, she’s delightfully fresh and unaffected.  She takes her modest acting chores seriously enough, but she also seems to be having fun, and is genuinely sexy.

Roger Moore is not Sean Connery, of course, but he’s effective enough as Bond, and the title song by Paul McCartney is a classic.  All in all Live and Let Die is a more than respectable entertainment.

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