Most of the commentary on the late Roger Moore have naturally focused on his time as James Bond and regard him fondly in the role.
Partly I think that's a function of age. For Generation X (my generation) he was James Bond. Sean Connery was only accessible in edited for tv movies that didn't do his films justice.
It was Moore's misfortune to take over the franchise at the genre's lowest ebb. The Bond films started out as conventional spy thrillers with a few gadgets thrown in but quickly took on an air of utter fantasy. By the time Moore took over, the image of cat-suited minions running around a hollow volcano while the hero looked for the self-destruct button was firmly seated in the public consciousness.
It was a very 60s conceit and ill-suited to the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, stagflation environment. A new breed of paranoid thrillers were coming out that were far more realistic and therefore tense.
Jame Bond therefore became almost a parody, a send-up of a secret agent with a lovable cast of characters (like the goofy Sheriff Pepper from Lie and Let Die) who got carried over into subsequent films as crowd-pleasing jokes.
His later Bond movies were his best and some of the best in the franchise. I think those are the ones many of my generation recall.
I'd like to point out another move of his that gets very little attention: ffolkes.
It's an odd name, and one that doesn't suggest tense action, but that's exactly what you get. According to IMDB, the alternate title was North Sea Hijack, and that's basically the story – the hijacking of a pair of oil rigs in the North Sea.
Anthony Perkins plays the hijacker and Roger Moore is the very eccentric special operator sent in to solve the problem.
Moore plays the anti-Bond: bearded, woman-hating, austere. He does great and it's a taste of what he could have done with Bond if he had better writing.
It's a good film if you get a chance to see it.
Rest in Peace.
Chateau Lloyd 
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