Film Review
It is not hard to see why
The Man
with the Golden Gun is widely considered the nadir of the James
Bond film series. With comic book storylines, paper-thin
characterisation and innuendo-based humour that would be substandard
even for a
Carry On or
Confessions film, the Bond films of
the 1970s were unlikely to stand the test of time, and you do wonder
how the films ever managed to turn a decent profit. By the middle
of the decade, the screenwriters and production team had lost the plot
and what audiences were fed was a pretty unsavoury diet of self-parody,
racial stereotyping and chauvinism that is nowadays pretty hard to
stomach.
The Man with the Golden Gun
has all these failings in abundance but what really sinks it is the
lack of a half-decent plot. Basically, the film is about a good
guy and a bad guy fighting over a small piece of electronic
hardware. This was never going to be the most inspiring of
actions thrillers, no matter how many exotic locations, car chases and
bikini clad females were roped in to pep it up.
The film's one saving grace is the inspired casting of Christopher Lee
as the deliciously evil bad guy Scaramanga. The man who famously put the bite
into Hammer's
Dracula films in the 50s
and 60s and went on to make a career playing a wide assortment of
demonic nasties, Lee is such an obvious choice for a Bond villain that
you wonder why he hadn't already appeared in the series. (In
fact, Lee's step-cousin Ian Fleming had suggested him for the part of
the principal baddie in the first Bond film,
Dr No).
It is Christopher Lee's straight-down-the-line portrayal in
The Man with the Golden Gun that
renders his character frighteningly believable and prevents the film
from collapsing under the weight of its own shameless
self-parody. By tacitly resisting the temptation to send up his
part (which could not have been easy given the way it was written), Lee
emerges as one of the best and most chilling in a long line of Bond
villains.
If only Roger Moore had followed the example of his co-star, this might
have been a respectable entry in the series. Unfortunately, Moore
plays his character more or less as it has been scripted, as a camp
cartoon-like secret agent whose every utterance must contain at least one inane sexual innuendo
and not one drop of something which might be mistaken for real emotion. The
supporting cast aren't much better. Britt Ekland's dumb blonde
routine becomes tiresome after about ten minutes and whoever suggested
bringing back Clifton James as the hillbilly sheriff (last seen in
Live and Let Die) deserves to
be dropped into a vat of liquid helium.
The Man with the Golden Gun
was the last of four Bond films to be directed by Guy Hamilton, a sad
note to end on given that Hamilton was the man who had previously
helmed the Bond classic
Goldfinger (1964), one of the
best entries in the series. It was also the last of the Bond
films to be co-produced by Harry Saltzman, who was forced to sell his
stake in EON for financial reasons. The ensuing
wrangling over the ownership of the Bond franchise would delay
production on the next film,
The Spy
Who Loved Me (1977), but that was no bad thing. The series
definitely needed a rest at this
point.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Guy Hamilton film:
The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
Film Synopsis
When James Bond receives a golden bullet imprinted with his agent code
007, his boss M takes him off his current assignment and requests his
immediate resignation. The bullet was apparently sent by
Francisco Scaramanga, the world's most notorious assassin, who kills his targets
with bullets fired from a golden gun. No one has ever seen
Scaramanga or knows of his current whereabouts, so Bond decides to run
him to ground so that he can be reinstated. Having traced the
assassin to Hong Kong, Bond witnesses the killing of a solar energy
expert. Aboard a converted shipwreck, M informs Bond that he is
not Scaramanga's target. In fact, the assassin is after a vital
component for a revolutionary solar energy system, a system which could
solve the world's energy crisis and make whoever possesses it the
wealthiest and most powerful person in the world. Unfortunately,
it looks as if Scaramanga already has what he was after...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.