Live and Let Die (film)

Live and Let Die
Theatrical release poster by Robert McGinnis
Directed by	Guy Hamilton
Screenplay by	Tom Mankiewicz
Based on	Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
Produced by	Harry Saltzman Albert R. Broccoli
Starring	Roger Moore Yaphet Kotto Jane Seymour
Cinematography	Ted Moore
Edited by	Bert Bates Raymond Poulton John Shirley
Music by	George Martin
Production company	Eon Productions
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	27 June 1973 (1973-06-27) (United States) 12 July 1973 (1973-07-12) (United Kingdom)
Running time	121 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom[1] United States[2]
Language	English
Budget	$7 million
Box office	$161.8 million

Live and Let Die is a 1973 spy film. It is the eighth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, while Tom Mankiewicz wrote the script. Although the producers had approached Sean Connery to return after Diamonds Are Forever (1971), he declined and a search for a new actor led to Moore being signed.

The film is based on Ian Fleming's 1954 novel of the same name. The storyline involves a Harlem drug lord known as Mr. Big who plans to distribute two tons of heroin for free to put rival drug barons 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 the drug baron's scheme.

Live and Let Die was released during the height of the blaxploitation era, and many blaxploitation archetypes and clichés are depicted in the film, including derogatory racial epithets ("honky"), black gangsters, and pimpmobiles.^[3] It departs from the former plots of the James Bond films about megalomaniac super-villains, 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 the Caribbean Islands. It was also the first James Bond film featuring an African-American Bond girl romantically involved with 007, Rosie Carver, who was played by Gloria Hendry.

The film 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.