James Bond has a contract out on him. The assassin? Scaramanga – The Man With The Golden Gun. Bond must find him before he finds Bond; let the game of cat and mouse begin!
An interesting tale, we are presented with the Moriarty of the Bond world, Bond's equal in every way, and what is even more impressive is the man playing him. Christopher Lee, a man with a real life special forces background and cousin of Ian Fleming. Lee brings a worthy and mortal legendary enemy to 007 – you can’t help but think what this match up would have been like between Connery and Lee. Mind no point dwelling on the past – this is definitely Moore’s era.
Here, mind, the tongue-in-cheek, cheeky action adventure is yet to come – here we have Moore playing Bond, a intelligent, sneaky but yet stone cold killer. Moore manages to not raise too many eyebrows and drop too many puns. What we have is Moore in oe of his finest Bond performances.
Stunts in this film are a-plenty – like Live And Let Die we are treated to a boat chase, unfortunately the same hick Sheriff is back as well! Want an example of how comic relief when it just isn’t funny or needed – look no further! What’s even worse is the hick doesn’t just turn up once he ‘happens’ to turn up twice! This hick almost ruins one of the greatest Bond stunts ever – a car jumps a bridge, but in doing so it manages to cork screw! Outstanding Mr Bond.
A quick word about Britt Ekland as Goodnight. Annoying!
The finale of the film is very different, which makes it all the more enjoyable from the others so far – it’s a duel to the death. Bond versus Scaramanga. The duel takes place at Scaramanga's island, where he happens to have a fun house so he can train against live targets. The fun house setting gives the duel a very sinister edge, the pace of the duel is very nicely played out – this culminates a film that very much is a cat and mouse story.
The film is a well made thriller, with some very well set up action sequences and fantastic performances all round (with exception of Ekland!). This is Moores second outing as 007 and it is how he should portray 007 – a stone killer with charming manner when he carrys out his orders.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Well we've come to the end of Day One and after 9 films all blogged and podcast, the entire Sean Connery collection and of course Mr Lazenby plus the first two Roger Moore films, that’s the equivalent of a decade of Bond movies! I can honestly say my eyes, my head and my sanity is in need of sleep. Who would have thought sitting watching films and trying to find sometoihng to say about them would be such a challenge? Anyone tells me this isn’t a challenge… Well I'll point out the errors of their ways. I’m sure with some (little) sleep I'll be ready to hit the rest of Moore’s tenure and carry on all the way to the end of Goldeneye where we end Day Two!
If you have donated, I thank you; if you haven’t, please consider it, it's for a worthy cause and we really are pushing our geeky selves on this challenge.
Well Night for now!
Rhys
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