The Roger Moore Performance That Proved He Could Have Played A Darker Bond

The Roger Moore Performance That Proved He Could Have Played A Darker Bond

Roger Moore’s James Bond was a smooth jokester but his performance in 1978’s The Wild Geese proved that he could have played a much darker 007.

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The Roger Moore Performance That Proved He Could Have Played A Darker Bond

Roger Moore is known for his charming and lighthearted take on James Bond, but his performance in The Wild Geese proved he could have played a darker iteration of 007. The iconic British actor played Bond seven times during the 70s and 80s, from Live and Let Die to A View To A Kill. Though that character is a notorious ladies man with plenty of witty one-liners, Roger Moore’s James Bond really took those trademarks to the next level. This makes his role in The Wild Geese a far cry from those portrayals.

The Wild Geese is a war film that stars an ensemble cast, including the likes of Richard Burton and Richard Harris. Though there are plenty of light moments, the film is still dark – especially for the era it was produced. The main characters are part of a mercenary band seeking to overthrow an African dictator and rescue President Limbani (Winston Ntshona), who’s in prison and set to be executed. Moore plays Lt. Shawn Fynn, the team’s pilot and an all-around colorful guy. Naturally, there’s a great deal of violence every step of the way with multiple shootouts and even a moment where a soldier’s throat is slit, which is graphically depicted by 1978 standards.

Arguably the roughest scene in The Wild Geese, and one that stood out for Roger Moore especially, is Fynn’s introduction. He’s discovered his boss Sonny Martinelli (David Ladd) has had him moving drugs, which he thought to merely be cash. He informs the sleazy kingpin a 19-year-old girl died after using that very heroin, which had been poisoned and he’s hellbent on retribution. Fynn pulls a gun on Martinelli and his henchman, instructing them to each eat a lethal amount of the poisoned drugs. When the henchman attempts to pull a gun, Fynn shoots him in the forehead. Martinelli is thus forced to ingest the whole bag and ends up crumpled over in agony. Fynn then exits, telling the doomed kingpin there’s no use trying to get his stomach pumped as there was a toxic pesticide in the heroin. It’s a brutal sequence and certainly not reminiscent of Moore’s portrayal of James Bond.

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The ruthlessness of his turn in this Wild Geese scene alone proves Moore could have played a grittier 007 if he’d been so inclined. Even so, Moore’s witty line delivery and overall levity still shine throughout the movie. Despite its serious plot, lighter moments are scattered along the way. Shawn Fynn is actually a quite three-dimensional character; he kills throughout the movie without a second thought, but the unjust death of a young woman drives him to make things right, even though he knows others will be sent to kill him as a result.

Not only does The Wild Geese showcase a much different version of a gun-wielding Roger Moore, but it also skews closer to the Bond from Ian Fleming’s original novels than any of the actor’s on-screen portrayals. In fact, his performance as Fynn is far more akin to the more serious versions played by Timothy Dalton or Daniel Craig years later. Though it wasn’t a Bond film, The Wild Geese was a sort of thematic shift for Moore, and something of a foreshadowing of what was to come in the 007 franchise.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/james-bond-roger-moore-darker-performance-wild-geese/

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