Burn Notice, Season 6, Episode 2

Due to Fiona being incarcerated it looks like the early episodes of Season 6 of Burn Notice are largely going to be broken into two stories. One will feature Fiona and her experiences in prison, and the other Michael and the rest of the gang and what they're up to outside.

Because of Fiona's reputation and what she stands accused of, she finds herself occupying a supermax facility with some very unsavoury characters. Try as I might I could not get Orange is the New Black out of my head when watching Fiona in prison. That image was further jammed into my psyche when Taryn Manning (Pensatucky in Orange is the New Black) turned up as a prison ally. The prison sequences seemed to be an excuse to show what a badass Fiona is. She wound up taking out a gang out to get her with two rolled up newspapers. Then her 'ally' tried to kill her, because her family had been threatened if she didn't do so. I'd say Anson had something to do with that. Overall Fiona seems to be handling her incarceration better than Michael is handling being separated from her.

Michael wants to see her, but no one, not even Pearce, can help him out with that. Sam even had to pull every string he had just to get a letter from Fiona to Michael.

Placed between a rock and a hard place and desperate to see Fiona, Michael contacts someone he never wanted to see again. Enter Tom Card. 

There are some characters (Simon, Anson) that you see them and you just know that they're bad news. Card is one such character. He was Michael's trainer. It is Card that Michael gets the yoghurt obsession from. Nice touch, that.

Card is on the surface off it an old school by the book kind of agent, he's also highly placed. He can get Michael in to see Fiona, but he won't do it for free. He still holds a grudge against Fiona because he sees her as part of what ruined the glittering CIA career he had mapped out for his protege. I'd argue that Larry had a fair bit to do with that as well.

To get his access visit Michael has to agree to helping Card take down a psychopathic drug dealer. The plan is to put a transmitter in the form of a pen (and I keep thinking of Q's line to Bond in Skyfall about not really going in for exploding pens anymore) on Michael and then have he and Jesse pull the guy into the DEA's sting operation. Michael has to withdraw, because the dealer's lawyer knows him. I'm actually surprised that doesn't happen more often. Miami's underworld can't be that big.

Card wants them to pull the pin on the whole thing, but Michael backs Jesse and sends him in. The only communication Jesse has is via the pen, which he's not even supposed to be carrying. He does a damn fine job of portraying a crooked DEA agent and in the process outs and gets an actual crooked agent killed and eventually manages to blow a shipment and pull the psychopath in as a witness. Well done 'Agent' Porter. Thanks to him Michael will get to see Fiona.

On the family side Nate is back in Miami and that's because he and his wife have split. Permanent custody of Charlie can't be far behind.

Licence To Kill - 1989

Background: there were a few issues behind the filming of Licence To Kill. It was the first Bond film that doesn't use the title of an Ian Fleming book or short story, although there are a couple of scenes from Fleming's work that do appear in the film. It was originally called Licence Revoked, I'm not sure why it was changed, although I think Licence To Kill works better, it's a more explicit reference to Bond's status as a 00 agent and it's a key point at the heart of the story.

Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson share the writing credits, but most of the work was done by Wilson, as there was a writer's strike (not the last time that would affect a Bond film) and Maibaum had to sit on the sidelines for a lot of the time. Wilson must have had a very full plate, as his stepfather was now nearing 80 and most of the producing work fell squarely on his shoulders with assistance from his half sister Barbara.

The original intention was to set the film in China, as Eon had never done a Bond film there, and they even had some scenes written that were set in the Golden Triangle. They altered the setting, because it was easier and cheaper to film in the US and at the time the drug trade from South America was far more prominent in the media than the Asian one was, plus they'd already dealt with that peripherally in The Living Daylights. The theme of the masterless warrior, seeking revenge, is however very Asian and Wilson admitted to being influenced by Yojimbo and other stories about masterless Ronin. Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns were also a source of inspiration.

Although they never explicitly said so, the popularity of other 80's action films did bother Eon, and when they looked at the themes in them, two elements regularly cropped up: revenge and drugs. Other Bond films have involved both those before (Live And Let Die was about drugs, most of Bond's pursuit of Blofeld was about revenge, especially Diamonds Are Forever and Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only was also after revenge for her parents. Diamonds Are Forever aside, Bond is regularly cautioned not to let revenge be a driver for him and he is forced to put his feelings aside to get his job done). Throughout the film it's almost like writer Wilson and director John Glen worked through a checklist of what went into a successful 80's action film. There is an air of if you can't beat them, join them, in Licence To Kill. It was also a good deal more explicitly violent than any other previous Bond film. There's often implied violence or the hint of it, but under pressure from competitors, Licence To Kill shows more graphic and obvious violence than any of it's predecessors.

It's quite a good action film, but it's not really a Bond film, and that's where I think a lot of Bond fans have an issue with it.

Story: Bond is in Florida attending the wedding of his good friend Felix Leiter (he was best man) when one of the CIA agent's cases involving South American drug lord Franz Sanchez comes back to haunt him and the result is that Felix's new wife is murdered and Felix himself is badly mauled by a shark.

Because the DEA can't go after Sanchez in his stronghold of the fictional banana republic of Isthmus City (modelled on Panama and the Medellin region in Colombia. Sanchez himself reminded me of Pablo Escobar, although they said the actor was chosen largely for his superficial resemblance to Manuel Noriega who was in the news at the time), Bond, who doesn't respect political boundaries, decides to get revenge himself, and in the process has his licence to kill revoked by an extremely pissed off M.

Most of the rest of the action takes place in Isthmus City and concerns Sanchez's drug empire, there's a fairly redundant sub plot about some Hong Kong based drug agents working with MI6, and they beefed up Q's role. 

There's two Bond girls in this as such, although I tend to regard Pam Bouvier as the real Bond girl, and relegate Lupe Lamora to the background more. It sets up a nice almost love triangle and Pam is one of the better Bond girls of this era, she's certainly a huge improvement on Stacey Sutton and Kara Milovy, both in the acting stakes and the writing of the character. Kudoes to Wilson for that, because I'm sure it was him and not Maibaum who did it.

Unsurprisingly enough Bond takes out Sanchez and his organisation, the fun is watching how he does it, and I kind of like the idea of a rogue agent working for himself on a straight out revenge mission. It was extremely fitting that Bond used the cigarette lighter that Della and Felix had gifted him for being the best man at the wedding to set a petrol soaked Sanchez on fire.

It does end in the water, with Bond kissing Pam in the pool of Sanchez's casino/resort complex.

As straight action films go, it's quite satisfying and entertaining, but people didn't like the lack of a spy story in this and reacted badly to it as they did not see it as a genuine Bond film.  Adding to that feeling is that I think it's the first film where Bond is not shown or even implied to sleep with anyone. Reaction may have spelled the end of the brief Dalton Bond era.

Casting:

Director: it was decided to keep John Glen, and I actually felt that working within a genuine action format he seemed to have some freedom and a much more relaxed style. As he was working with a highly professional and very talented cast he didn't have to do a lot of directing of actors and could instead concentrate more on making the stunts bigger and better than ever before. The bar fight in the waterfront bar is wonderfully choreographed with even a stuffed marlin being used as a lethal weapon.

James Bond: this was Dalton's second go round as James Bond and I think it's a far better outing than his first one. He seems more comfortable and more assured. He's worked out how to play it and imbue it with more of himself and less of him trying to be Sean Connery. He retains his edge and is believable as a man on a mission of revenge. It also helps that he and Carey Lowell bounce very well off each other and have the chemistry that was woefully lacking from the pairing of Dalton and D'Abo. Dalton never quite looked like Bond for me (his nose was too large and his hair seemed to be too thin), but it was a shame that he didn't get to play the role again after this film, because I think he really could have made it his own. It took Connery and Moore both three films before they really nailed it at their third try.

Franz Sanchez: the role was apparently based on Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama who used his position to traffic drugs, among other criminal activities and actor Robert Davi was cast because he bore a superficial similarity to the Panamanian dictator. I felt the role was more Pablo Escobar, but his media profile may not have been as high when the film was made. Davi also doesn't look at all like Escobar. Davi was a method actor and apparently did a lot of research into Colombian drug cartels and stayed in character off set. He was quite believable and while fans weren't keen on the idea of the Bond villain being a drug lord I felt Davi was better than some of the more over the top villains the series had featured. Cubby Broccoli's daughter Tina and writer Richard Maibaum suggested Davi after seeing him in the TV film Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami. He was looked at as a future at the time, but the career seemed to stall after this and the only other role of note I can ever remember seeing him in was as a gung ho FBI agent in the first Die Hard film.

Lupe Lamora: I'm putting Sanchez' girlfriend here instead of under the Bond girl section as I don't really see her that way, and the role is too large to use as in the Peripheral section. She's also quite instrumental in helping Bond bring her boyfriend down. It's not an easy role for Talisa Soto to play and she almost pulls it off, she's not totally believable all the time, but uses her dark flashing eyes to get through scenes where her acting fails her. Davi was instrumental in casting her as he expressed that of the twelve candidates presented for the role he would be most likely to kill for her, which is part of the relationship between Sanchez and Lamora. I've only just now realised that her surname is the same as one of my favourite fictional heroes Locke Lamora and wonder if author Scott Lynch got the name from this film, I know he's a Bond fan. Soto was briefly married to Australian actor Costas Mandylor and is currently married to actor Benjamin Bratt, with who she has 2 children.

Peripheral roles: they were able to retain the services of Robert Brown as M, Caroline Bliss as Moneypenny and of course Desmond Llewelyn as Q. For once M is working out of the office most of the time and therefore Frederick Gray isn't there, and there's no Cold War or Russian component of Licence To Kill, so no need for Gogol, which made The Living Daylights the final appearances of Geoffrey Keen and Walter Gotell as Bond regulars. Brown gets to sink his teeth into the role for the first time and he radiates quite some authority when he orders Bond back to work, then takes his gun and revokes his licence to kill when the agent refuses to obey a direct order. Caroline Bliss' Moneypenny was understandably minimised and she's really only there to call Q when M makes it clear that MI6 have cut Bond loose. The Q role was considerably beefed up in Licence To Kill. Desmond Llewelyn made quite a song and dance publicly after The Living Daylights saying how important Q was to the franchise, how he wasn't well paid for it and felt that he was being undervalued as a character and underused as an actor. This time he goes out into the field to help a Bond with less resources than usual and no backing from Her Majesty's government. He is mostly used for comedic effect and if this had been Llewelyn's last appearance as the MI6 boffin it would have been a fitting swan song.

Milton Krest: this is one of Sanchez's henchmen. He's very sleazy, and is often seen coming on to Lupe in the captain's cabin of the Wavekrest, the only thing that keeps him from taking it further is that his boss will kill him if he finds out. It makes the Lupe role rather reminiscent of Domino in Thunderball. Krest meets a bad end being literally exploded in a depressurisation chamber when Sanchez suspects him of stealing money. Anthony Zerbe was a veteran actor who did a more than adequate job with the sleazy and dangerous drug smuggler.

Sharkey: I'm not really sure why he was in this. He was apparently a good friend of Felix's and was one of the groomsmen. I think he was meant to remind people of Quarrel as he was a big black guy who ran a fishing boat charter business out of Florida. I did at one stage think he was Quarrel's son, but that was Quarrel Jr in Live And Let Die. He winds up being killed while helping Bond to investigate Della's death and Felix's mauling. He was played by former NFL player Frank McRae. He isn't required to do much other than look large and somewhat scared most of the time.

Felix Leiter: God I love their casting decisions with the character. Interestingly enough the Felix character inly appeared in one Roger Moore film (Live And Let Die), yet was in both Dalton's outings (still can't work out why he was in The Living Daylights, though). They decided not to cast a new actor this time, David Hedison appeared in the role again, 16 years after his first appearance and at the age of 61. He does look a very well preserved 61, though, Glen wasn't too keen on casting him because of his age, but he did a great job in the role, as he had in Live And Let Die, and remains the best of the original Felix's for mine. It is interesting that Felix has clearly aged in the intervening 16 years, yet Bond hasn't. Given what happened to the agent during the film, it's safe to assume that the intention was to write the character out of the films.

Truman-Lodge: Sanchez's financial director and chief salesman. He is the quintessential sleazy 80's businessman. Snappy sales patter, totally amoral when it comes to the pursuit of money, literally more concerned about the dollar than anything else. He's played by Anthony Starke (yes, I know his name is Tony Starke), who specialises in this sort of character. He was the smooth, card sharp character in the TV version and series of The Magnificent Seven and also the business devoted father of spoilt brat gymnast Lauren Tanner in the ABC Family teen drama Make It Or Break It.

President Hector Lopez: the president for life of Isthmus City, this is a figurehead role and he's really a paid employee of Franz Sanchez, the real power in the South American city state. It's quite a small role and I really only include it because Lopez was played by Pedro Armendariz Jr. the son of Pedro Armendariz, who played Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love, it's a nice little touch and the son does look like the father.

Dario: again a henchperson like Daario probably wouldn't get a mention apart from the fact that he's played by Benicio del Toro. This was an early role for del Toro and according to Glen played him as 'laid back while menacing in a quirky sort of way. The actor would later go on to win an Academy Award for his performance in Traffic.

Professor Joe Butcher: this was largely a comic role and while important to the story, his televangelist was how Sanchez received his drug orders, it was really another piece of celebrity casting, because Professor Joe was played by Las Vegas legend Wayne Newton, who was a fan of the films and actually asked the producers for a cameo role in one of them. It's rather surprising that they didn't consider getting him to record the theme song.

Pam Bouvier: I have to confess I really liked Pam as a character. She was a welcome change from the shrill, useless, helpless damsel in distress Bond girls from the last two films. I can't recall James really saving her, it was usually the other way around. She's practical (she wears a bullet proof vest to her meeting at the Barrellhead Bar and comes armed with a pump action shotgun because she knows the place's reputation and the sort of people that hang out there), she's tough and can take care of herself, she's got useful skills (a contract pilot for the CIA), she knows when to pull her head in and can alter her appearance (going from the pilot persona to the personal assistant one) when required. There's a cute little scene when she orders Bond's signature martini and in case the bartender doesn't understand her English she mimes that he is to shake it, not stir it. I wonder if that is in script or she ad libbed it. She also works well with Q. I love the fact that when they needed to give her an alias she got called Ms Kennedy, as opposed to Bouvier (Bouvier was Jacqueline Kennedy's maiden name). Model Carey Lowell was cast, and she's an example of casting for looks, but being lucky enough to get an actress. She watched the other films for inspiration on how to play Pam and she wore jeans and a leather jacket to the audition so that she wouldn't just be seen as window dressing. She's one of the most successful Bond girls in the history of the franchise.

The Curse of the Bond Girl: the curse definitely did not hit Carey Lowell, and that would be largely because she can act and do more than stand around providing scenery or scream for help. She continued to act after the film and broke out of the Bond girl mould by landing the key role of District Attorney Jamie Ross in the highly acclaimed crime show Law & Order, she reprised the role of Ross in 2005 as a guest role in a spin off of the original show. Personally she's been married three times, has a daughter from her second marriage to actor Griffin Dunne and another from her third marriage to actor Richard Gere. She largely retired from acting in the mid 2000's, but personally and professionally she has been one of the most successful former Bond girls and she's probably as well known for her role in Law & Order as she is for playing Pam Bouvier in Licence To Kill.

Pre credit sequence: this was a really nice bit of setup. Bond, Sharkey and Felix, all in morning suits are enroute to Felix's wedding when Felix hears about an opportunity to nab Sanchez who he has been chasing forever, despite it being his wedding day he goes after the drug lord. James goes along to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't get killed. Sanchez is also seen in the sequence and they establish his character by showing him having Lupe's lover killed and then savagely beating her with the tail of manta ray for cheating on him. There's also a nice stunt with James attaching Sanchez's getaway plan to a DEA helicopter before he and Felix parachute to the wedding.

Gadgets: you'd think that with an adventure where Bond is cut loose from MI6 that it would have to be gadget less. Nothing could be further from the truth, when 'Uncle Q' gets involved while on leave from his position at MI6. Once in Isthmus City Q provides his protege with all sorts of hi tech equipment to help out. An exploding alarm clock (guaranteed to never wake up anyone using it), a laser x-ray camera, like the alarm clock it wasn't actually used by Bond in the mission, but Pam makes the mistake of thinking it's what it looks like only to find that the flash triggers a laser and it takes x-ray photographs, another camera that is actually a gun that uses fingerprints as it's recognition and once keyed to a user can't be used by anyone else. That feature saves Bond's life. Q has dentonite toothpaste, which is plastic explosive and it's triggered by what looks like a packet of cigarettes. With Moore's departure Bond took to smoking cigarettes again. Q also has a transmitter hidden in a broom, which he uses in the field to update Pam on Bond's movements.

Music: the original idea was to get guitarists Vic Flick and Eric Clapton to write and perform a theme song and they produced something that matched Dalton's gritty performance as Bond, however Broccoli and his family turned it down, for reasons I can't even pretend to understand. Instead they used something completely forgettable performed by Gladys Knight. No disrespect to Knight, who is an excellent performer, but it's a rotten song. The song was written by Michael Kamen and he also scored the movie (John Barry had a throat injury) and as he'd done movies like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard you'd think he could produce something fitting for an action film, but this one is just dead. It was a top 10 hit in the UK, but that must be down to brand loyalty only. The songs are great advance publicity for the films and if they work it helps to get people through the doors, but the Broccoli's and later Michael G. Wilson have never seemed to quite grasp this and have a history of selecting artists after their day has come and gone.

For the 3rd time the film ends with the promise that James Bond will return, but not in what. At this stage I think they were a bit bereft of ideas and audiences were concerned. Despite the claims there were doubts that James Bond would return and if he did when, in what and played by who?

Live And Let Die - 1973

Background: I wouldn't call this a reboot, but the franchise was certainly dragged kicking and screaming into the 1970's with it's 8th instalment.

This was the first ever Bond film that I actually saw in the cinemas (well, I saw it at a drive in - remember them? But you know what I mean) as a result I tend to rate it a lot better than many others would. I had no knowledge of Connery, Blofeld or SPECTRE at the time, so when I saw this film everything was new to me. I'm convinced it's why I like Moore a lot more than plenty of others do. It's a little like the old adage that Dr Who fans tend to prefer their first Doctor over others who have played the role over the years.

As the producers had feared the deal with Connery and Diamonds Are Forever was a one time thing, so they had to find another Bond. A number of actors were considered, among them Americans: Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Eastwood would have been dreadful, Reynolds was more promising, although two things counted strongly against him. One was his height, both Broccoli and Saltzman were quite insistent that the actor be over 6 foot and the other was that he was identifiably American and they wanted someone who was British, or close enough that it made no difference, for the part. Roger Moore had a profile on both sides of the Atlantic and he had now finished with The Saint, so the time was right. He had the two things that Reynolds didn't. He was over 6', I believe he's 6'4", and he was very most definitely British. 

Live And Let Die, like Diamonds Are Forever before it was very definitely made to cater to the American market. It also sought to cash in on the blaxploitation sub genre, that was popular at the time. Broccoli and Saltzman didn't create trends, but they did know how to follow them and Live And Let Die is an example of that.

The casting of Bond aside, a lot of this one was steady as she goes, and they got Guy Hamilton back for his 3rd go at directing.

Story: Unable to use Blofeld and SPECTRE, they decided to take a different tack and focused on a drug lord based in the mean streets of New York and New Orleans and the fictional Caribbean island of San Monique. Being a blaxploitation film there's also plenty of pseudo voodoo talk and symbolism in this one. Baron Samedi in particular.

The opening shot, where Bond strolls onto screen in the sights of a gun barrel that turns into an eyeball, stops, turns and shoots had also been updated. The original shot used in the films wasn't of Sean Connery, it was one of the stuntmen. I'm not sure what film they first used Connery. Lazenby was certainly the figure in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and it was definitely Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. In all of the previous openers Bond wears a hat. The figure that performs the shot in Live And Let Die is unmistakably Moore, but he's not wearing the hat. It's a nod to the times (very few men wore hats in 1973) and a sign that Bond is finally acknowledging that it's no longer the 1960's.

Bond does not appear in the pre credit sequence (more on that later) and it may be an acknowledgement from Eon that they got the introduction of Lazenby as Bond wrong and didn't want to make the same mistake with Roger Moore.

Bond is wooing an attractive Italian intelligence operative when M arrives at his door, accompanied by Moneypenny. This forces Bond to hide his lover and pretend that he was at home alone. Bernard Lee was unwell not long before making the film and this may have been why they chose to cut down on his screen time and have him briefly at Bond's apartment. There's also very little flirting with Moneypenny, although she does discover the girl in the closet.

Bond soon finds himself in New York liaising with Felix and being taken hostage briefly at a restaurant in Harlem, meeting for the first time with the mysterious and scary Mr Big. He gets away with the help of a local CIA agent. Not Felix, he's overseeing the operation.

Before long Bond is checking out San Monique, using cans of spray deodorant to fight off snakes in his hotel room and meeting with his 'wife' local CIA agent Rosie Carver. There's also a nod to Dr. No when Bond and Rosie hook up with fishing boat owner: Quarrel (no, they didn't bring the original one back from the dead, this is his son; Quarrel Jr. Curiously everyone else has gotten older, except for Bond).

Rosie turns out to be a traitor and is killed by her own side, because she let Bond get too close for comfort. Bond uses Quarrel to get him close enough to island ruler Kananga's private estate so that he can hang glide into the compound, seduce Kananga's virginal tarot card reader and personal fortune teller Solitaire, check out the ruler's heroin crop and the village where he performs voodoo sacrifices, then it's off on a wild car chase through the island while Kananga's tame police force try to catch Bond and get Solitaire back. Bond escapes them in a clapped out double decker bus, and discovers and novel way of getting the tall vehicle under a low bridge.

Back in the States, Kananga retrieves Solitaire (he does regard her as his possession) and has Bond taken to a crocodile/alligator farm, that also doubles as a drug lab, for disposal. Odd that they included crocodiles, which while larger and more dangerous than alligators, are not native to the US. Bond manages to escape the jaws of death by running across the crocodile's noses. This in itself shown how far stunt work had come. I don't know what they would have done years ago, probably not included the escape. The owner of the farm that they shot the scene on; Ross Kananga (yes, the ruler of San Monique was named after him) actually performed the stunt himself. It took him five tries to get it right and he was very nearly bitten on more than one occasion!

After the escape is a thrilling boat chase through the swamps and bayous. The chase was really well choreographed and quite different, if a little long. It also introduced what I saw as one of the low points of the franchise and certainly Hamilton's films; the character of J.W Pepper. Pepper is an ignorant, loud mouth, racist, tobacco chewing Louisiana sheriff. Predictably Bond outsmarts him and Felix ensures that the British agent is not arrested by the overbearing police officer. Pepper is meant to be comic relief, he's not funny and most of his behaviour is cringe worthy.

Once he's out of Kananga's clutches, and the big reveal has been performed that Kananga and Mr Big are in fact one and the same, Bond heads off to San Monique to save Solitair, who due to her disloyalty and losing her gift by sleeping with Bond and therefore giving up her virginity, is going to be sacrificed to the voodoo gods. 

Bond ruins the sacrifice and frees Solitaire, they flee into Kananga's underground lair, where like any good evil mastermind he reveals his plans before attempting to kill the hero. His idea is to get a large percentage of the world's population hooked on heroin and then use his monopoly on the drug to make himself one of the wealthiest most powerful people on the planet. He's a little like Goldfinger, he doesn't actually want to rule the world, he just wants to make lots of money.

Bond uses a compressed air pellet to literally blow Kananga up and he and Solitaire make their getaway. This is one of the very few Bond films that does not end on the water. The two actually find themselves in a cross country train. I'm not sure where they were going or what Solitaire was going to do with her life now that she was free of Kananga, but for the immediate term the two are going to enjoy a liaison on board a train. It's nearly spoiled by Kananga's henchman TeeHee stowing away on the train and attempting to kill Bond using his metal prosthetic arm, but Bond ingeniously gets the better of him and barrels on cross country in the arms of Solitaire.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense and it was very campy, although less so than Diamonds Are Forever. Moore's performance is quite light and breezy and he handles the one liners, of which there are many, better than any previous Bond. To own the role though he would need to harden up, not every villain plays things as by the book as Kananga did.

Casting:

Director: Guy Hamilton returning was a bonus. He knew the franchise and was an experienced hand to guide it into new waters. With a new actor playing the main role that's an important thing and another mistake they made with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Hamilton knew what was expected of him and how to do it, plus he also seemed to work well with Roger Moore.

James Bond: the experience with Lazenby had shown the franchise how important it was to get the right actor. Although other actors were discussed and considered, maybe even tested, the role was always going to go to Moore. He hadn't done it twice previously because he was otherwise employed. Broccoli was concerned about associations being made with The Saint to the extent that Moore was not allowed to do his single eyebrow raise (a few did slip through, though) as that was something Simon Templar had used! Roger Moore slipped into the role like a foot into a custom fitted shoe. He did not put a foot wrong.  It's interesting that Connery was looking too old in 1971. Moore is actually three years older, but looked about three years younger. Smooth is the best way to describe his performance, if anything it needed a little roughening.

Dr. Kananga/Mr Big: the dual role of the villain was played by emerging actor Yaphet Kotto. Kotto had been seen in the blaxpolitation film in Across 110th Street and his performance impressed Broccoli, Saltzman and Hamilton enough that they cast him in Live And Let Die. He's not at all bad as Kananga, softly spoken, but menacing, a little less convincing as Mr Big, although that can be partly attributed to the make up he wore for the role, although it didn't look particularly effective. His intimidating size helped to make him quite scary.

Peripheral roles: due to illness Bernard Lee was in doubt, but recovered and soldiered on, although I think his role was made smaller as a consequence of that. Lois Maxwell had returned to her original hair colour, so didn't have to wear a hat this time. The lessening of M's role necessitated the same thing to Moneypenny's part and there wasn't any flirting with Moore's Bond, although she did bid him farewell with a rather sarcastic ciao in reference to the Italian girl hiding in his closet. I assume Desmond Llewelyn had another gig, because for reasons that left unexplained Q doesn't appear in this. It was the only film between From Russia With Love and The World Is Not Enough that he didn't appear in. One of his gadgets does save Bond's life, though.

TeeHee: this is Kananga's henchman. He's probably the most effective one since Oddjob (not coincidentally another Hamilton helmed production in Goldfinger). Julius Harris is a large and intimidating individual, add in a metal prosthetic that can bend gun barrels and snip off fingers and you've got one badass henchperson.

Rosie Carver: the role went to Gloria Hendry. Rosie, until her untimely demise, is really comedy relief and she plays that particular role very effectively. She's less convincing in the love scenes, though.

Whisper: the very soft voiced, overweight henchperson with the impressive beard was played by Earl Jolly Brown. His ability to only talk in whispers, which gave him his name, seemed to have also been used as a comic tool.

Quarrel Jr.: it was a nice nod to Dr. No to include Quarrel's son in this. I don't know if Roy Seymour watched the film a lot or not, but he played a younger version of Quarrel to perfection. He even looked similar enough that the relationship between the two was quite believable.

Felix Leiter: at long last they got it right. David Hedison was perfect casting. Right age, right look and the writing gave him a mixture of office and field work. If they had at this stage decided that they were going to continue to cast Hedison as Felix then I would have thought the finally got the right actor for the role.

Sheriff J.W. Pepper: I don't have anything against actor Clifton James. He got given a role and he did what he was told to do, possibly he did it too well. I never saw the need for Pepper's character, he was a mistake and the film wouldn't have suffered if he wasn't in it, in fact it may have been improved considerably.

Solitaire: I never quite understood what an English rose was doing working as a fortune teller on a Caribbean island, and the fact that the role was hereditary made it even odder. Diana Ross was considered before the decision was made to stick to Fleming's book version of the character, who was also white. Catherine Deneuve came up in conversation (they really had actresses they wanted to cast!), but seeing Jane Seymour in British period drama The Onedin Line got her the part. Seymour is the best actress in a Bond girl role since Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Like Rigg, Seymour was an actress first and a very attractive woman second. She was listed as being introduced in the opening credits, but she had appeared in a number of films by that stage, they just may not have been well known by American audiences. Her looks are perfect as Solitaire and she plays the innocent, naive, sheltered psychic with the right amount of vulnerability. She does a lot of screaming for James to help her, but given her background and upbringing that's not surprising.

The Curse of the Bond girl: Seymour is another one who bucks this tendency for the career to go south after doing a Bond film. Again that can be explained by her being an actor, not a model being thrust into an acting role. She continued to work steadily in films throughout the 70's and 80's, and achieved significant and lasting film on TV in the '90's in the title role of period drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Even after that show finished she's continued to get plenty of work mostly on TV and has aged very gracefully.

Pre credit sequence: this isn't an exciting pre credit sequence. It's rather like Dr. No in that it shows three separate assassinations: a British representative is electrocuted by his headphones while listening to a translated speech from a Hungarian delegate, a CIA agent is killed at a New Orleans street funeral and becomes the guest of honour and a British agent is executed as part of a voodoo sacrifice, and it's that last one that gets Bond sent on the mission. I think it was a good idea to wait until after the opening credits to introduce audiences to the new Bond.

Gadgets: there was really only one that was used extensively and that was Bond's wristwatch, which was a powerful magnet and a rotating saw. The CIA provide a cigarette lighter that doubles as a communication device. Bond even refers to it jokingly as a 'Felix Leiter lighter'. Kananga has his remote camera scarecrows that also have guns hidden in them and the flute communicator. TeeHee's arm could also be considered a gadget.

Music: Paul and Linda McCartney read the original novel before penning the song for the film. This was the first time in 5 films that John Barry didn't provide the song. It was the first rock and roll song used in the films and it was a chart success both in the UK and the US. Rather amusing that the most popular theme song in a long time was both written and performed by a former Beatle, when one of  the earlier films had been so dismissive and insulting of the band. Harry Saltzman didn't like McCartney's version, preferring the lounge version sung during a restaurant scene. The man definitely had odd tastes. Live And Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings was not only one of the best songs at the time, it stands up now as one of the best they've done.

James Bond will return in The Man With The Golden Gun.

Burn Notice, Season 1, Episode 3

Like the second episode this one too is largely an motw episode, although it does significantly advance Michael's efforts to find out who burned him. As with episode 2, episode 3 also attempts to highlight what a nice guy Michael can be, despite his past.

That was one thing that always struck me as a slightly weak point in the show. To pull off the moves he does in an effort to bring con artists and thugs and the like to justice, Michael and his team, have to outlay a significant amount of money with very little chance of return. Apparently Fiona does jobs on the side, but I don't think she spends her money on Michael's white knight for hire efforts. In episode 2 he took $300 for his efforts, he would have spent two to three times that amount. Initially he did ask for $500, but a filthy look from his mother bargained him down to $300. I assume Oleg (his landlord), who hires him in episode 3, pays him better, but it isn't covered.

Oleg has an employee; Carol, who is scared and being heavier by a local drug lord who she saw up to no good and is planning to testify. So, although it's not totally explained I think Oleg foots the bill. Michael does mutter to Carol at one stage words to that effect.

The meeting with the drug lord highlights something about Michael. He can look very menacing when he wants to, but he generally doesn't. He can however fight and some of the drug lord's underlings find this out to their regret.

We get to see Fiona improvising with Molotov cocktails and Michael turns his mother's garage into a safe house for Carol and her teenage daughter.

It's interaction with said daughter when she runs off to attend a dance at school with a boy she likes who prompts Michael to open up about how he had to leave Fiona in Dublin and never find out what might have been.

In fact the relationship between Michael and Fiona is a secondary theme in this episode. Fiona is officially Michael's ex-girlfriend and business associate as far as he is concerned, but as far as the lady herself is concerned, she wants to be back in a relationship, she even openly wonders if she should help him with his burn notice, because if he can crack that he'll be out of Miami and they'll be off again.

Another theme is Michael's abusive past with his father. Jeffrey Donovan has a small scar beneath one eye. Michael claims his father gave it to him. His father also used to force him to do things like fake seizures in public so he could steal things, it all gave Michael a strong sense of independence and made him a survivor. Where his father is concerned Maddie certainly seems to wear rose coloured glasses, or maybe she just needs to deny the truth to herself. Michael does wind up getting a pretty distinctive and high powered Charger out of it, though. He did need a vehicle, because stealing one all the time was going to become tedious.

There's something this show does that I find quite clever. It has a fairly large cast of characters every episode and, aside from the principals and recurring characters like Oleg and Barry the money launderer, they only appear once and are gone, but we the viewers still need to know who they are. So when they first enter the story a name flashes up on the screen, most of them say something like: Carol, the client or Oleg, the landlord, but occasionally get h a funny one along the lines of: Boris, wannabe Russian warlord, Quentin, small time con artist or Hector, local drug lord.

I believe this episode also marked the first appearance of blueberry yoghurt, which is a staple of Michael and Fiona's diet, although in this it's first appearance Sam is eating it, it's about the only time he ever did. It's also the first time we see Sam use the alias of Charles/Chuck Finley. It was pretty much his go to name. It was just the way he spoke and dressed when using it that changed.

The episode ends with Michael, having blackmailed an Egyptian diplomat/spy, receiving a copy of his notice and coming one step closer to finding out who issued it and why.