Live and Let Die (film)

Live and Let Die is a 1973 spy film, the eighth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, and the third in the series directed by Guy Hamilton. It was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, while Tom Mankiewicz wrote the script.

It is based on Ian Fleming's 1954 novel. The storyline involves a drug lord in Harlem, New York City, known as Mr. Big, who plans to distribute two tons of heroin for free to put rival drug lords out of business and then become a monopoly supplier. Mr. Big is revealed to be the alter ego of Dr. Kananga, a corrupt Caribbean dictator who rules San Monique, a fictional island where opium poppies are secretly farmed. Bond is investigating the deaths of three British agents, leading him to Kananga, and he is soon trapped in a world of gangsters and voodoo as he fights to put a stop to Kananga's scheme.

Live and Let Die was released during the height of the blaxploitation era in American cinema, and it depicts many blaxploitation archetypes and clichés, including derogatory racial epithets ("honky"), black gangsters, and pimpmobiles.^[3] It departs from the former plots of the Bond films about megalomaniacal supervillains, and instead focuses on drug trafficking, a common theme of blaxploitation films of the period. It is set in African American cultural centres such as Harlem and New Orleans, as well as Caribbean islands. It was also the first Bond film featuring an African American Bond girl romantically involved with 007, Rosie Carver, who is portrayed by Gloria Hendry.

It was a box-office success and received generally positive reviews from critics. Its title song, written by Paul and Linda McCartney and performed by their band Wings, was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Live and Let Die was followed by The Man with the Golden Gun the following year in 1974.