Ranking the James Bond films in letter grade tiers

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Roger Moore’s first James Bond movie is one of the franchise’s worst. It’s a tone-deaf mess, trying to be a Bond movie and a sort of “blaxploitation” action flick — complete with a redneck sheriff chasing Bond through Louisiana — and failing to succeed at either. The voodoo-centric plot, which kicks off with a funeral in New Orleans and takes Bond to Harlem, is full of racist innuendos. The only standouts are Paul McCartney and Wings’ title song (a classic), Jane Seymour as Bond’s love interest, and the fierce Yaphet Koto as the main villain.

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This should be a better film. Yaphett Kotto’s Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big is a terrifically menacing baddie, and his henchmen — Tee Hee (Julius Harris), Whisper (Earl Jolly Brown) and Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) — are the stuff of nightmares. The stunning Gloria Hendry gets a too-brief appearance as the first African-American Bond girl. But it’s junky. The redneck Sheriff Pepper (Clifton James) was a huge hit with audiences, but the comedic diversion he provides is at odds with the film’s mostly dark tone.

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Not a great start to Roger Moore’s turn as Bond. The first of the actor’s 007 films feels at times like it’s supposed to be everything that the Connery pictures weren’t, right down to the hard-charging theme song by Paul McCartney and Wings. (Just nine years earlier, Connery’s Bond had uttered the immortal line, “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Pérignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”) But Moore’s softer, funnier Bond hasn’t quite come into focus yet; he feels directionless here, a kind of Connery Lite. With its nods to Blaxploitation and its gritty, handheld New York car chases, Live and Let Die does feel at times like it’s trying to be more hip – only to wind up as anything but. This one featured Bond making love to a Black woman for the first time – a double agent played by Gloria Hendry – but their subplot is undone by the fact that her character is depicted as dumb, superstitious, and backstabbing. (Her character was also written to be thoroughly inconsequential to the plot, so that these scenes could be easily removed in theaters where audiences might be offended.) Indeed, the film’s racial politics wind up being quite hideous, which it tries to mitigate a bit by making the most ridiculous character in the movie Clifton James’s racist redneck southern sheriff (who would return, unfortunately, in The Man With the Golden Gun).

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Roger More films were best, and the following Sean Connery films were not better but with the better special effects they are on par with mores films

the pierce brosnen and roger craig films were not great by any measure.

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Only the hotness of a young Jane Seymour keeps it out of the bottom tier.

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B tier

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From Russia With Love

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A tier

Thunderball
Goldfinger
From Russia with love
Goldeneye
Casino Royale

B tier

For your eyes only
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Live and Let Die
The Spy Who Loved Me
Tomorrow Never Dies
Skyfall
Moonraker

C-tier

The Man With the Golden Gun
The Living Daylights
Spectre
Octopussy

D-tier

No Time To Die
The World is Not Enough
Quantum of Solace
Diamonds are forever

F-tier

A View to a Kill
License to Kill
Die Another Day

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