He’s no patch on Sean Connery, but Roger
Moore’s rigid, dutifully hedonist James Bond may be closer to the
original Fleming conception. You’ll have plenty of chances to compare,
as Beer and Movie closes its spring run with three Moore appearances: Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun and Octopussy.
He gets more comfortable as he settles into the suits and sheets, but
Moore’s initial image (an alarmed Ken doll, basically) is a perfect
contrast for Live and Let Die, which plops Bond into
Harlem and the Caribbean; he gets called “honky” a lot. Bond gets to
perform some neat tricks—turning aftershave and a cigar into a
blowtorch, having interracial sex—but much of the appeal can be found in
a line from one of his Harlem tails: “You can’t miss him—it’s like
following a cue ball.” The ethnic relations are, in short, almost as
enlightened as Flashman and the Redskins. Laurelhurst.
- Best paired with: BridgePort coffee porter.
- Also showing: Barney’s Version (Laurelhurst), The King’s Speech (Academy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Mission, St. Johns, Valley).
