The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

After a lackluster debut in Live and Let Die, Roger Moore’s tenure as Bond was off to an inauspicious start, peppered with inopportune humor and a dated sensibility.  Though not quite perfect, The Man with the Golden Gun vastly improves on its predecessor for a more than enjoyable second outing with Moore.

James Bond (Moore) receives a death threat from legendary assassin Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), who vows to kill 007 with a bullet from his golden gun.  Facing a mandatory leave of absence from MI6, Bond instead opts to pursue Scaramanga across Asia, a quest less-than-ably assisted by secret agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland).  But on Scaramanga’s secret island base – under the custodial care of his henchman Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) – Bond discovers Scaramanga’s real motives in the midst of a duel quite literally to the death.

I had good things to say about Roger Moore in Live and Let Die: surprising even myself, considering his reputation as an unpalatable Bond for today’s grim-n-gritty crowd.  Fortunately, those still stand with Golden Gun.  Moore’s Bond is different than Connery’s, less aggressive and more suave; he remains entirely capable, compelling, and convincing as an able-bodied (in every sense of the word) secret agent.  He delivers the one-liners with the right placement of his tongue in his cheek, but he’s equally at home firing a pistol or pursuing clues (more on those later).

More importantly, though, Christopher Lee is a phenomenally first-rate Bond villain as Scaramanga.  More than atoning for Live and Let Die’s rather limp villainous cast, Lee is the baddie we deserve – perhaps no surprise, considering his impressive thespian résumé.  Indeed, with anyone else wielding the titular golden gun, this film might have been a dull entry in the canon, but Lee’s presence elevates the picture into another stratosphere.  It helps that the character is exceptionally well-written, with fascinating motivations (even amid a slightly hokey technosabotage subplot) and – if we’re being totally honest – a really cool gimmick in the form of that some-assembly-required firearm.  Lee and Moore play off each other quite well; in a parallel universe somewhere, there’s a version of this film starring Sean Connery opposite Lee, but for now this one will do (although the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon reinterpretation ain’t bad, either).

The less said about Britt Ekland, the better; she’s the worst kind of Bond Girl, the kind whose irrelevance to the plot is thrown into sharp relief whenever the screenwriters shoehorn her into a romantic scene with Bond.  Perhaps worse, it’s apparent that Ekland was not cast on the strengths of her audition tape; instead, it seems she was cast solely for the wardrobe change in the third act which restricts her to a skimpy bikini and makes her literally the butt of a joke about her incompetence as a field agent.  Similar jeers go to Clifton James as Sheriff J.W. Pepper, apparently on vacation in Thailand; this boorish caricature of a performance feels entirely out of place in this film, a brutal swerve toward lowbrow comic relief that’s as out of place as Larry the Cable Guy would have been in Skyfall.  (Please, Lord, don’t let any important decision makers see that idea.)

Ultimately what redeems The Man with the Golden Gun – Lee aside, of course – is director Guy Hamilton’s navigation of a screenplay that takes him back to his Goldfinger roots.  Like most of my favorite Bond movies, this one involves Bond searching out clues and evidence; neither he nor the audience has all the pieces when the film starts.  This air of mystery that Hamilton cultivates, even amid the irritating supporting cast and the grotesquely misplaced slapstick comedy, makes The Man with the Golden Gun an engrossing feature film, one that plays to the strengths of its leads and its director.  Compared to Live and Let Die, Golden Gun ends up being Moore’s (and Hamilton’s) finer hour.

But I hear the next one is even better?

The Man with the Golden Gun is rated PG.  The standard amount of gunplay occurs in this film, though a few headshots with bloody trickles are shown.  Bond seduces two women; two women are seen naked, though one is behind frosted glass, and the other is implied to be skinny-dipping.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) on October 7, 2013!  (And would you believe I’ve actually never seen this one before?)