The Man With the Golden Gun

The Mission
Super-assassin Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) sends 007 a golden bullet to let him know that he's coming after him. M (Bernard Lee) responds by cutting Bond loose from his current mission regarding the theft of a revolutionary solar energy device, in the hope that Bond will be able to turn the tables on Scaramanga. In reality, Scaramanga isn't after Bond at all - 007 is being lured by Scaramanga's trapped girlfriend, who wants the assassin dead.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Roger Moore is more than comfortable in the role now, he's all charm and amusement as James Bond and plays Bond's more thuggish moments in a matter-of-fact manner. Bond is still as chauvinistic as ever, he isn't afraid to manhandle a woman to get information. He's also flippant regarding his fellow agent's feelings towards him, and chastises her mistakes.

Bond knows who Scaramanga is by reputation, and is bemused and unfettered by the prospect of the assassin taking out a contract to kill him. Unsurprisingly, 007 knows his firearms and can fly a plane. He also knows his science, is adept at martial arts, and still smokes cigars. Strangely, he doesn't speak Chinese despite stating in You Only Live Twice that he specialises in oriental languages. He's mildly horrified by a Thai wine called phuyuck.

He also finally gives some explanation to his philandering and general attitude towards women - due to his dangerous and jetsetting lifestyle (and never knowing where he'll be) he lives somewhat in the moment.

Villainy
Scaramanga has all the outlandish superficial hallmarks of a typical Bond villain but otherwise doesn't fit the mould. He isn't interested in world domination and he has to be forced into opposition with Bond before he'll consider trying to kill him. Sure, he plans to sell off a stolen solar energy prototype to the highest bidder, but he only plans to use the money to do up his extensive island hideaway (!) Scaramanga makes his living as a high-priced assassin, he's half-Cuban and was brought up in a circus (where he was traumatised by the violent death of an elephant he considered his only friend), and he got his training in the KGB. He wears snazzy white linen suits, collects butterflies, has three nipples, is athletic, and gets his thrills from killing. He also has a flying car.

He admires Bond and sees him as a possible friend due to their shared experiences. He's also rather taciturn due to his solitary lifestyle, and only shows affection to his girlfriend right before he kills someone. Scaramanga's main offsider is Nick Nack (Herve Villechaize... the little guy from Fantasy Island who used to shout "Da plane! Da plane!"), a midget valet who's more of a friend and colleague than a henchman.

Buddies and Babes
Mention is made of agent 002 (real name: Bill Fairbanks), who is killed in Beirut before the adventure begins. James Bond knew him and liked him, but isn't too torn up due to the nature of their business. M (Bernard Lee) is as irritable as ever, and temporarily relocates MI6 headquarters into the inside of a rusty shipwreck near Kowloon Point in China. Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) seems frustrated and cold towards 007, indicating that she has finally had enough with his flirting ways.

Bond's main trysts during The Man with the Golden Gun are Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) and Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland). Miss Anders is Scaramanga's unsatisfied girlfriend, a woman on edge enough to shower with a gun. Mary Goodnight is an MI6 agent who has worked on and off with Bond for the last two years. As you might guess, she pines for his sexual attention and (in the tradition of previous Bond girls Rosie Carver and Tiffany Case) is slightly incompetent despite the fact that she's meant to be a highly trained spy.

Bond's main contact whilst in China and Thailand is Lieutenant Hip (Soon-Tek Oh), a friendly agent with a ready laugh and two schoolgirl nieces highly trained in karate. Whilst in Thailand, James Bond also meets the lewdly named Chew Mee, a nude asian girl swimming in the pool of Scaramanga's contractor. On a more unfortunate note, Sheriff J. W. Pepper (from Live and Let Die) makes an improbable return appearance, and even gets to ride along with 007 on a car chase through China (I've wiped from my mind how they even contrive this to happen, that's how ridiculous it is and how unfunny Pepper is).

Locations
A brief visit to Beirut, Lebanon, is represented by a darkened club resplendent with bellydancing (no doubt filmed in a British studio). Most of the location work (and the film itself) takes place in the Chinese hubbub of Hong Kong and Macau (more casinos!) and Thailand. The Thai scenes feature a martial arts school, elephants, those little speedboats they use in the rivers, ceremonial dancing, kickboxing and plenty of tourists (including J. W. Pepper).

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
No Bond gadgets for this outing but Goodnight has a Q-designed homing device hidden in the back of her dress that comes in useful when she's kidnapped by Scaramanga. Meanwhile, Bond continues his penchant for impersonation by posing as Scaramanga in order to extract information out of the hitman's contractor... he does this by wearing a fake third nipple.

Licence to Kill
I imagine this would have to be the Bond film with the least kills in it... as far as I can tell the only person he kills in the whole film is Scaramanga, whom he shoots in the heart during a duel.

Shag-Rate
Bond strikes a deal with Miss Anders to share her bed in order to get the solex agitator from her, and in return he has to kill Scaramanga. He almost sleeps with Agent Goodnight at a couple of points throughout the film, but they don't get down to business until the very end of the film.

Quotes
BOND: Who would pay to have me killed?
M: Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors. The list is endless.

BOND (to Thai boy): I'll give you 20 000 bart if you can make this thing go faster.
THAI BOY (flicking a switch in speedboat and then holding out hands whilst grinning): 20 000 bart!
BOND (pushing boy into water as he speeds off): I'm afraid I'll have to owe you.

MISS ANDERS: You're not unattractive.
BOND: At last, you're starting to tell the truth.

SCARAMANGA: I like a girl in a bikini... no concealed weapons.

BOND (to Scaramanga): There's a usual four-letter word, and you're full of it.


How Does It Rate?
The Man with the Golden Gun doesn't have the best reputation amongst Bond fans, and after the rip-roaring Live and Let Die it's a little hard to disagree. However, I have a soft spot for this film as it breaks with the traditional format of having Bond go head to head with a megalomaniac. It's more of a globe-trotting cat and mouse game between two highly trained killers... well, that's what it probably should've been, there's elements of that at play but overall the film is a little too convoluted.

I think the easiest way to make it a better film would've been to take out all the attempts at comedy (though this could be a general criticism of the Roger Moore era of James Bond in general)... the return of everyone's least favourite racist, blustering J. W. Pepper, really tests the viewer's patience. Also, the use of a comedy sound effect completely undermines the effectiveness of one of the most amazing stunt sequences in the entire franchise's history (a car jump that features a mid-air twist). It's a thoroughly 1970s James Bond - sleazier than ever with a visit to a strip club called Bottoms Up and a gratuitous shower scene, and mining the hot topic of the day (the renewable energy crisis) for material.

The best thing The Man with the Golden Gun has going for it is Scaramanga, he's not your usual James Bond villain - he just likes killing people and kitting out his bachelor pad. It's just a shame that Scaramanga's involvement in the plot gets delayed for the first forty or fifty minutes of the film. It's not a poor film, there's some nice Hitchcockian use of tension in the climax, and Moore is settling into the role quite nicely, but it's not one of the great James Bond films.

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DIRECTOR: Guy Hamilton
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Richard Maibaum and Tony Mankiewicz, based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Clifton James, Herve Villechaize, Richard Loo, Soon-Tek Oh, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Man with the Golden Gun, the thirteenth James Bond novel in Ian Fleming's series.
- James Bond previously visited asia in You Only Live Twice.
- There have been many films about hitmen over the years, some of the more prominent examples include The Day of the Jackal, Assassins, The Assignment and the more recent The American.