Bond-arama: No. 0015 The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Too high, right? You think The Man With The Golden Gun should be lower than No. 0015 of 0023? Honestly, that would have been my gut feeling too, until I started to think about the film and how it really compares. And in the end, this is where it belongs. Observe.

Plot Quality: The plot to Golden Gun stands out rather uniquely among the Bond films. The film begins with Bond being pulled off his mission to recover a stolen device that transforms sunlight into highly concentrated energy: the Solex agitator. He’s been removed from the mission because MI-6 has received a golden bullet with Bond’s 007 number on it. This golden bullet means that the mysterious Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the world’s greatest assassin, intends to kill Bond. M suggests that Bond go into hiding. Bond instead decides to track Scaramanga down. This is perhaps one of the strongest ideas to power a Bond film as, for once, the story isn’t about Bond’s duty, it’s about Bond hunting a man to save his own life. This is Bond versus the anti-Bond, mano-a-mano.

As the story unfolds, Bond traces the golden bullet to Macau, where he sees Scaramanga’s mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) collect the bullet. He tries to follow her, but is blocked by the agent sent to assist him, Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland). Bond eventually makes contact with Andres and discovers that she sent the golden bullet to MI-6 because she wants Bond to kill Scaramanga. In exchange, she will give him the Solex MI-6 has been looking for. Bond agrees, but Scaramanga kills her before she can deliver. This begins a chase scene which eventually leads Bond to Scaramanga’s private island where he and Bond hunt each other in an elaborate funhouse Scaramanga has set up to practice his craft. Bond kills Scaramanga, rescues Goodnight, retrieves the Solex, and sails for home.

Honestly, the above is a top James Bond plot. You have a strong villain with extraordinary skill, unlike many of his predecessors who are merely rich. His motive is unique. This is a dark, visceral story of a contest to the death between the world’s two greatest hunters supported by a lean plot that makes sense throughout. You have a strong Bond girl who drives events, exotic settings and even the travelogue feel. These are things the lower-ranking films simply cannot boast, not with their bland or cartoonish villains, their nonsensical or pointless plots, and the indifference with which so many of them were approached. That’s why this film isn’t rated lower.

So why isn’t this film rated higher?

Well, therein lies the problem. For while the structure of this film is fantastic, the execution isn’t. In fact, the film kept undercutting itself. For example, whereas Live and Let Die was a blaxploitation film, this one borrows heavily from martial arts films, yet Moore feels out of place in that environment. This also led to the regrettable decision to have Bond let two young girls do his fighting for him in one scene... something which feels embarrassing; not to mention, the scene is ridiculous as these two small girls kick in the general direction of supposedly trained martial artists only to have them fall down unconscious from blows that would be unlikely even to slow a grown man.

This awful scene then leads directly to one of the worst moments in a James Bond film, as we are reintroduced to Sheriff J.W. Pepper (played by Bufford T. Justice Jar-Jar Binks Clifton James). Pepper is the fat, obnoxious, racist Southern cop from Live and Let Die. Here he’s playing the ugly American on vacation in Thailand as he complains about the “little people” in their “pajamas” and tells us loudly how he does it better in Louisiana. The portrayal is offensive and reeks of anti-Americanism – in fact, this is the third of three films written by Tom Mankiewicz, each of which contains whiffs of anti-Americanism.

The one good thing to come out of this painful scene was an incredible stunt where Bond jumps an AMC Hornet over a broken bridge while doing an aerial twist. The stunt is fantastic... but the filmmakers ruin it by mocking it with a slide-whistle noise.

I think the problem was this. As Lawrence Meyers noted at BH, each Bond film takes on a theme and runs that theme throughout. The theme here was a circus theme. Hence, Scaramanga’s story starts with him shooting an elephant trainer. He uses a mirrored funhouse as a hunting ground. The Solex is hidden in a bag of peanuts. Henchman Nick Nack (Hervé Villachaize) dresses more like a ring master than a servant. They use the Queen Elizabeth as a setting for MI-6, which is built at a diagonal angle. Etc. In effect, they took the absolutely worst possible theme, a comedic circus theme, and they interwove that with the strong, serious plotline discussed above. That’s why this film sits in the middle... its plot deserves to be near the top, but the stupidity from the circus-comedy they interwove with the plot deserves to be near the bottom. Essentially, this is two incompatible films rammed awkwardly together.

Bond Quality: This was Roger Moore’s second Bond film and already there were warning signs. In Live and Let Die, Moore played the role fairly seriously. In this film, the lounge lizard personality he would come to embody began to appear at times. He comes across as less physical and foppish; Moore apparently looks sufficiently strange running that they hired a stunt man to run for him. There are few fights and Bond even lets young girls do his fighting. He seems indifferent or standoffish to the women he encounters too. And he ultimately has a hard time showing that he believes what is happening to his character. This only gets worse from hereon out for him.

The Bond Girl: Maud Adams plays Scaramanga’s mistress. By all rights, she should be the Bond girl here, but she gets killed midway through the film. It is great that her character is the reason for the film, having tried to trick Bond into killing her lover, whom she fears, and being the driver of the stronger portion of the film. That said, like Moore, Adams is a cold fish and does not project emotion or urgency onto the screen. Still, she is adequate and her character is great. The other one is the problem.

The real Bond girl here is Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight. She has been heavily criticized for this film, and deservedly so. She has zero sex appeal or chemistry with Bond. Her character has been described as “an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent.” She is constantly doing things that only happen in sitcoms, like locking herself into the trunk of a car or using her butt to accidentally start a laser. She inhabits the comedic portion of this film and everything about her and the character was the wrong choice.

Villain Quality: Finally, we come to the villain. In a vacuum, Scaramanga is one of the top villains the series has produced. Indeed, even critics who have panned the film have called him one of the best villains in the series. He’s Bond’s equal as an assassin; he has skills, which most of the others don’t. He’s cold blooded and ruthless, yet Christopher Lee also injects joy and likeability into him. He is compelling. He even has the strongest back stories of all the villains. His story begins with him killing a man who killed an elephant he cared for - this is something many people can sympathize with and makes him understandable. But from this, he finds he has a talent for killing and he decides to make use of it. Eventually, he becomes a KGB assassin, but then goes independent and is now considered the best in the world. This is real depth and compares very favorably to the dull misanthropic billionaires Bond usually fights.

He’s also one of the more complete villains. Many of the others seem to have no purpose in life except to plan some scheme and then wait to see if Bond stops them. Scaramanga is different. He’s going about his normal business as an assassin, having been contracted by billionaire industrialist Hai Fat. He has a relationship with Maud Adams. He seems to enjoy life. Bond doesn’t obsess him, which really makes him feel like a “whole character” who has an existence outside the plot.

His weak spots really are the comedic elements that are thrust upon him at times, though he largely inhabits the serious portions of the story. It also seems strange that he kills Hai Fat and takes over his business, as that contradicts his character. I also would have preferred it if he didn’t own a private island, but there seems to be no escaping that in this series at this time... at least it’s not crawling with jumpsuited henchmen! All told, he is a great villain.

What you have here is two films laying on top of each other. The film involving Scaramanga, Bond and Adams is a serious film with a fantastic plot, a solid Bond girl and a great villain, which deserves to be considered a top Bond film. The film involving the other characters is a lousy comedy that mocks the film and deserves to be ranked at the bottom of the Bond films. This combination makes the film much better than it deserves to be, but nowhere near what it should have been. And that is why this film is No. 0015 of 0023.