Rewatching some of the Roger Moore era Bond films recently, its quite striking just how cold-blooded he can be, despite his era supposedly being more light-hearted.
We have metioned examples here earlier (in For Your Eyes he kicks a henchman down a cliff and in The Man with the Golden Gun he slaps Anders until she tells him), but in all his films he has moments.
Sure Craig and Dalton and Connery look more scary and intimidating at first glance and are in fact, but compare it with the internal POV. Moore Bond comes across as a somehwhat quirky middle aged Gent and suddenly, without warning a target finds themselves being ruthlessly disposed off.
More effective.
One thing that Connery (and Lazenby) did that none of the others would or could were the in your face, non quick cut, one on one fights. Against Robert Shaw in From Russia, against the South American thug in Goldfinger, against the smuggler in Diamonds…they had the size and believablility to pull them off.
But his appearances were bookended by Connery’s Bond (who, as far as I can tell, joked about killing) and Dalton’s Bond (who, as far as I can tell, didn’t joke about much, but, yeah, killing made the short list). Why single out Moore?
Connery was a street kid from Aberdeen and Lazenby was an Aussie special forcer. They could believably pull off a hand to hand fight to the death. The others not so much.
Moore had been in the Army as well. And we saw in ffokes that he absolutely could play the hard fighter.
My point is that in his Bond portrayal he purposefully made the character look docile to others, which is why they were so easily caught out when he started beating them up.
Craig’s Bond looks like a special forces type when you see him.
Moore’s Bond looks like a dandy. A toff. When he gets dangerous people are surprised.
And anyway in a list of “Most Assholish thing 007 has ever done”, Moore’s Bond has most of the spots sown up.
The coldest throwaway Moore Bond death, from Moonraker, was the girl he slept with the get information that Dax had killed the next day. Bond never even knew he caused her death. I wonder if it even would have matter to him if he know. That’s cold.
In ffolkes I suspected ffolkes wasn’t just misogynist, but maybe gay. And maybe his men, too. “My people know their way around a man’s anatomy!” I’ll bet they do. So it would have made an interesting conflict with the gay hero facing off against a gay villain. Anti Bond.
Heck, it’s the point of the title: “Stuff my orders; I only kill professionals; that girl didn’t know one end of a rifle from the other. Go ahead, tell M what you want; if he fires me, I’ll thank him for it.” [pauses as he ponders what he did instead of killing her] “Whoever she was, I must have scared the living daylights out of her.”
Connery could be pretty cold-blooded as Bond, too. Witness his killing of Professor DEnt in his very first Bond film, Dr. No. Dent has just tried to assassinate Bond by shooting him in his sleep, only to find that Bond had set a decoy, and has turned the tables, knocking the gun out of his hand. As Bond interrogates him about No, Dent spies the gun nearby and tries to get it without Bond (who seems not to be paying attention) noticing. He finally snags the gun and pulls it on Bond, who doesn’t react as Dent pulls the trigger, finding the gun empty.
“That’s a Smith and Wesson,” he says, nonchalantly, “And you’ve had your six.”
Then he easily pulls the trigger on his own gun, killing Dent.
Admittedly, Dent had just tried to assassinate him, but it really is pretty cold to kill essentially an unarmed man like that. The Double 0 branch operates under a different set of rules, evidently.
In this case, the movie follows precisely the plot of the original story. In Fleming’s short story, Bond did see the female assassin, who transported the gun in her instrument case, and adjusted his aim at the last second to avoid killing her. His companion noticed this and said he’d have to report Bond’s actions, and Bond replied with pretty much the same words.
Even better in the movie, and it must have been shocking for a 1962 movie audience, Bond not only shoots the unarmed Dent, he puts another shot into his back to make sure Dent’s dead. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cns2HKn0tDk