Yes, Connery and Craig may have done it better, but Moore was the spy I loved
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Not only did the man in the fancy getup on my TV have a sleek miniature plane that I instantly wanted, he flew it straight through an aircraft hanger and smirked as the heat-seeking missile chasing him blew it up with all his enemies inside. I was too young to understand who those enemies were or even fully comprehend the notion of death, but those were minor details.
In the next scene, the man parked his little plane at a gas station, asking the attendant to, “ fill ‘er up, please, ” as if it were nothing. To me, it was kind of everything.
News broke today that Sir Roger Moore, who portrayed that man on my TV screen across seven films and 12 years, died at the age of 89 after, “a short but brave battle with cancer, ” as family members said in a statement. It didn’ t come as much of a surprise to those who follow film news — certainly, many of the publications that ran obituaries this morning had them at the ready.
These tributes described Moore’s James Bond as “ comic, ” “ playful, ” “ winking ” and employ similar maybe less generous terms that pointed at the actor’s less-than-serious, less-than-intimidating take on the role. Underneath all these generally polite, loving tributes and reports, however, lies the now-uncomfortable, opinion that many of us have held for years: Moore just wasn’ t a very “good” Bond.
Raffish, charming and, any way you cut it, entertaining, Moore stood atop an era that saw Bond evolve from the sharp, desirable killer Sean Connery helped create into an amiable, somewhat prettified comic character. The difference between his first, often grim Bond film, “Live and Let Die, ” and his final, frankly bonkers outing, “A View to a Kill, ” shows the transformation of Bond from a merciless clandestine operative to a genteel superhero in linen pants. He became a celebrity spy in a world profoundly sillier than that of Connery’s character (and Connery’s was pretty silly.)
There was good reason for it. Grim, murderous determination was never the mannered, polite Moore’s strong suit. While a certain amount of anger always boiled under Connery’s Bond (even while he was offering a warm smirk or a devilish raised eyebrow) , Moore often came across as peevish whenever he tried to channel the same untapped rage.
Though not to the manner born (his father was a police officer and he attended state-supported schools) , Moore performed Bond, and his entire life for that matter, with a certain gentlemanly aristocracy. Light touches and restrained, ironic humor were his forte. Rather than force him into the mold Connery left behind, his producers allowed him to tack the Bond franchise toward his strengths.
The results were, in their time, positive. Working with three directors (Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert and John Glen) over seven films, Moore offered the approachable, lovable Bond that audiences of the 1970s and’ 80s seemed to want. With the world swinging back and forth between harsh realities — Vietnam, financial crises, the enduring threat of nuclear war — it’s hard to condemn viewers for responding to an easy, breezy hero who had more high-tech toys than face-to-face kills, who seemed more a playboy tourist than a driven spy who had sex in space.
When we look back in hindsight, however, Moore’s Bond appears more cheesy than cutting, more campy than genuinely thrilling. Pages could be filled with Moore corniest antics, but perhaps this scene when Bond escapes pursuers in a hovercraft gondola, causing a bird to do a double take, is all we need.
But perhaps it was his (often accidental) tendency toward self-parody that has deflated the legacy of the Moore years in the eyes of modern audiences. As the films went on, the actor’s inability to perform decent action sequences (or even a plausible fist fight) became obvious. Never an intimating or athletic figure, Moore soldiered on as Bond well into his late 50s, his diminishing physical prowess becoming more and more apparent.
