a biased review of The Man With The Golden Gun

Wow, this movie kinda sucks.

So to start with I need to recuse myself: Roger Moore is easily my least favorite Bond.

First, he's the James Bond actor I find the least attractive. If you didn't know, Roger Moore was older than Sean Connery. Not older when he took the role of Bond, mind you; Roger Moore was three years old when Sean Connery was born. And he ages like a true Greatest Generation dude, so at age 47 in 1974 he looks like a dude now who is 63. Already in his second movie he's giving me the yucks when rolling around with Britt Ekland, who was 32 but unlike Roger she has Swedish Highlander genes, so she looks like she's 23. And in this film she acts like she's 14.

Second, Roger Moore gives a performance like he's the star of a parody of James Bond, rather than James Bond himself.

Look, it's okay if your superhero or super spy movie is a comedy. I'm a diehard defender of Superman 3. What Superman 3 gets right is that Superman himself isn't a goof. Christopher Reeve accepts his role as the straight man opposite Robert Vaughn and a hammy Richard Pryor. What he doesn't do is put his tongue firmly in his cheek and walk around bemused, all but glancing at the camera in virtually every scene. Like Roger Moore does.

James Bond can be funny. Sean Connery gives a reaction to "my name is Pussy Galore" that is almost breaking. Key word there is almost. Sir Sean recognizes I think that we're having more fun if he's firmly a part of the wacky world that James exists in, and not detached from that world. The difference between Roger Moore performing James Bond in a James Bond movie and Roger Moore performing James Bond in a Saturday Night Live sketch is... nothing. I don't think it would be different at all.

Let's get back to Britt Ekland. They do this character dirty - real dirty. At one point Jimmy and Mary go out to dinner where she tells him she doesn't want to be one of his conquests. Less than sixty seconds later we cut to their hotel, where she bounces up to him in a babydoll nightie because she's changed her mind and is dtf. KNOCK KNOCK here comes the bad Bond girl (the villain's girlfriend) and Mary gets shoved into a closet.

Mary is shoved. Into a closet. I mean that literally.

007 then proceeds to seduce and then fuck the bad girl (Maud Adams, who will later go on to play Octopussy) WHILE MARY IS STILL HIDING IN THE CLOSET. What the ever living hell, Jim?

Next thing you know Mary is shoved into the trunk of Scaramanga's car so we can have a car chase. The car chase ends with Scaramanga (the title character) driving into a Taiwanese barn and ridiculously large wings are grafted onto his Golden AMC Pacer from... somewhere.

Look at this thing. This is the worst wacky car business from any Bond movie. They just glued wings and a propeller onto the top of his car. It would have made so much more sense for him to drive into the barn and emerge in a regular airplane. What is the advantage of having just wings stashed into your secret barn hideout? Just have a plane there! One that doesn't require you to have a unique car to attach to and make your escape. You know, in case the police or a British Intelligence officer were on your trail.

Considering that the prop they built didn't even fly it would have actually been better for Scaramanga to push a button to make the car simply transform into a doofy blue screen rocket ship. That at least would make a degree of sense; you could take off from anyplace.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

The best element of the movie is Francisco Scaramanga, the titular Man With the Golden Gun, who is an assassin for hire and effectively serves as the Anti-Bond. The James Bond series has a number or Anti-Bonds: 006 from Goldeneye, Mr Silva from Skyfall, Red Grant in From Russia With Love. Scaramanga is the one that embraces the easy-breezy playboy aspect of Bond.

Whereas guys like 006 or Silva represent a "fallen" secret agent marked by disfigurement, (and Red Grant is Mister Serious), Francisco Scaramanga asks the question What if James Bond just worked for himself instead of Her Majesty? What if he just decided to live the good life? No revenge scheme, no burning hatred, just murdering people for a million dollars a head and then back to his permanent vacation jet-setting and then lounging on the beach of his private island between jobs. Killin' and chillin'.

This is a cool idea. I really want to watch a movie that follows an evil James Bond around as he does the opposite of saving the world. This isn't that movie, in spite of the title. We get a cold open starring Scaramanga and his henchmen Nick Nack but after the opening title songwe cut to James Bond and stay with his perspective for basically the entire movie. "Too much James Bond" may sound like a weird complaint for a James Bond movie, but like I said the bad guy is about the best part of this movie and he's barely in it until the final act.

Think how cool it would be to have a movie that sees the world through the eyes of a Bond Villain. Where we follow the adventures of a sexy playboy womanizing assassin for hire, and James Bond pops up as the antagonist on this person's trail.

I think that would be pretty great. I think that would be better than The Man with the Golden Gun actually is.

In the third act, Jimmy tracks Scaramanga to his supervillain lair, which is a beachside resort instead of a secret volcano base, and instead of an army of guys in jumpsuits there are two employees, one of whom is 3'11". Jim and Frank have a literal "twenty paces and turn and shoot" pistol duel, but Frank disappears to set off a cat-and-mouse dungeon crawl through his funhouse lair. Supposedly this section was too long and the producers chopped it down, which is a real shame because it's what the entire movie has been building toward since before the credits. And it's pretty abruptly cut short and Scaramanga's death comes from a twist most people can probably see coming before the credits rolled back at the beginning of the movie.

Things I enjoyed:

seeya!

Josie