Live and Let Die

Sunday 16th February

Bond has yet again regenerated, this time into Roger Moore; an interesting man, slightly younger and blonder then Connery with overly expressional eyebrows.

This time jetsetting off to New York where he makes friends with Captain Hook (who’s hand was actually taken by a crocodile), Mystic Meg (this one prefers tarot cards to a crystal ball)  and some quite colourful taxi drivers.  After being rejected by Mystic Meg Bond sulks off to the Caribbean where he is quickly attacked by the always highly dangerous snake on a stick.

The overly screamy and overly easy Rosie appears; first to kill Bond, but her fear of hats quickly gets the better of her so she decides to sleep with him instead – obviously the safest option given the scary hat.   A move, which like so many before her have found leads to her dying, at the hands; or rather eyes of a scarecrow.

In an almost original move Bond convinces Mystic Meg to sleep with him using a pack of tarot cards. In fairness he does then rescue her from a bunch on CCTV scarecrows on heroin so really it’s a win-win.

Betrayed by Mystic Meg and left to the mercy of Captain Hook’s crocodiles it looks like it could be the end for Bond, surrounded with no apparent escape, apart from his trusty magnetic watch; however the watch’s power seem more inline with removing clothing than summoning boats.  This could be it for Bond, until he spots the obvious escape route - running across six or seven alligators, setting a laboratory on fire and escaping in a speed boat – who needs fancy gadgets when you can just lure your enemies into crashing speedboats into sheriff’s cars.

All this accumulates in a high speed boat chase straight through a wedding ceremony, understandable that Bond may have a slight dislike for weddings since the outcome of his own; but that’s no real reason to ruin them for other people.

Unable to keep out of troble, Mystic Meg finds herself as the centrepiece of a tribal ceremony being taunted with a plastic snake; naturally Bond rescues her and they run away to the underground lair of the films super-villain “Mr Big” who probably attended the same class in creating nicknames as Blofeld as its really not all that original. Neither is attempting to drop Bond and Mystic Meg into a sharkpool but I guess since Mr Big isn’t in SPECTRE he thinks he’s being original. 

With Mr Big fed to his own shark it’s a sixteen hour train back to London for Bond and Meg; they pass the time playing cards and fighting off captain hook; who they discover is extremely useful when trying to open train windows.

I did find this a little disappointing; not overly enamored by Moore, no overly ridiculous gadgets, unless you count a magnetic watch which seems to have the same powers of attraction as a weak accido spell performed by a Hogwarts first year.  No overly cheesy chatup lines; and not enough M, Q or Moneypenny.