The Man with the Golden Gun on Prime Video — Computer Interlock
Now that I am in the Moore era, I have also entered a more biased phase of my bond movie reviews and thoughts. My appreciation towards Roger Moore colors almost every of his movies, including this one.
Yes, I have forewarned you, at the outset.
Before I sat down to watch Golden Gun, I was all prepared to be disappointed and underwhelmed. Online chatter is all about how this is amongst the worst movies in the series and how it’s not as cool and all that.
I liked it. I found it very exciting, but in a low key way.
Francisco Scaramanga
You know, the Bond franchise is not afraid to experimenting, even when the results might be less than perfect. Here, they somehow managed to create a villain protagonist who is arguably better than James Bond in every way.
Scaramanga is so obviously a villainous version of James Bond, and better than him in every way because he is not held back by any sense of duty or morality with his self-issued license to kill.
Ultimately, Bond is an assassin. He’s a paid for assassin who kills people and gets a lot of other people killed along the way too.
That’s it. Yes, he is the good guy because he is killing based on instructions from the government. That makes the questionable act of killing itself, more easy to digest. However, you look at the way Bond goes about his business, it’s hard not to see that he does operate in the grey area.
For instance, majority of bond girls end up dying almost immediately after having sex with him. Occasionally, Bond will mourn them, but, most of the time, there is really no time to mourn. He has already moved inside another woman, if you get my drift.
Scaramanga removes the grayness and goes black entirely. He is very good at shooting folks, and he gets paid for it. No different than Bond. He likes to keep his relationships simple, so, he just hires out women, something which many of the good guys do too. He has achieved legendary status and maintains top level anonymity. Further, he has a penchant for gadgets and has a car that turns into a flying plane.
Even James Bond does not have that! Once again, the bond franchise has impressed me with their ability to come up with cool villain.
I also like that midget guy. He is equal parts funny, and equal parts serious. Not like Oddjob scary, but, funny scary. Keeping in line with the general comedic tone of Moore movies.
Low Stakes Story
The Connery era movies always went for global domination and destruction. James Bond is always trying to save the world, from outlandish problems because of that SPECTRE organization.
My assumption is, when Connery retired, so did SPECTRE. This also adds a bit of variety. For instance, the plot of Dr. No, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds are Forever are almost the same.
With Moore, there is no SPECTRE anymore, and hence, we are getting more variety with the stories. The previous movie was about Blaxploitation, and this time, it’s about the Kung Fu craze with a more Man versus Man sort of deal. There are no global destruction at stake.
Scaramanga is just an assassin who is going about his life, and has been for decades. If anything, the villain respects Bond and has worked hard to stay away from confronting his only true enemy. In the movie, we find out that, the path crossing only happened because a lady of the night was tired of having fun-less sex with the assassin.
When the two killers meet, it’s like an old school Arthurian Legend duel. Instead of swords and sandals, it’s suits and guns. Fair rules are followed. As fair as a villain would. Scaramanga is not beyond utilizing some kind of a bizarre fun house to distract his opponents.
Think about that for a minute. Scaramanga invites his opponents to his island, and has cut off all methods of escaping. Then, he plays with them, a cat and mouse game, in a maze of his own design. The fun house is controlled by his henchman. So, clearly, even assuming similar skill levels, Scaramanga always has an advantage.
He is definitely fighting dirty.
That is why, Bond gets back to him by playing dirty. Sure, there is some plot about Solar device that belongs to the government, and such. That’s only so that there is an excuse for the producers to put it in some essential intrigue and stuff blowing up at the end.
Goodnight — You Silly Hotness
I keep thinking that, somewhere, somehow, the bond producers really want to put down America at every chance they get. This started in Diamonds Forever, and keeps going strong for the 3rd straight movie.
The movies keep implying that the American people, agents, and women are not that smart.
Why are they doing this?
Anyway, Goodnight is super silly. Like, no matter how you cut it, you have to assume that she is just too dumb, like, unrealistically dumb. For instance, she is totally cool with hiding in the closet while Bond bones some other woman. Assuming that Bond is just as good in bed as with his spy skills, there is probably lot of moaning and screaming happening.
So, Goodnight just sits through this. I am probably overthinking it, but there were zero reasons why the story could not have just let her escape through the window or something. For whatever reasons, the writers thought, this is how they should insult this character’s intelligence.
Things reach an all time low at the end. Our bond girl, once again, finds herself in the tiniest bikini they could find. Once again, stuck hanging with the villain of the week. Once again, left unsupervised.
Once again, accidentally, walking backwards, and pushing the big red button and causing destruction. But, why did it have to be her bikini clad butt that does this? Accidental cute ass presses game ending button. Why is this happening. She was already pressing buttons. She could have just pressed it with her fingers. Why!
Oh my god! This was too much for me to handle.
Discussing bond girls, it’s unfortunate what happened to Andrea. She seems more mature, smart and if not for the ‘bond girls must die’ policy, she would have survived the movie. As always, both bond women are absolutely beautiful. The bond movies always get the most beautiful women from all over the world.
Even in an otherwise dull movie, OHMSS, the women were hot. It’s part of the appeal and there is an endless availability.
Score
I am marathon watching the James Bond movies and I wish to rank them at the end. So, I came up with a numbering system. The scores for this one are here.
- Action and Stunts 9/9
- Coolness Cool 5/9
- Double Entendre and One Liners 9/9
- Hot Women 9/9
- Ludicrous Villainy, Cool Deaths and Traps 5/9
- Gadgets Man! 5/9
- General Awesomeness 9/9
- Boredom Factor 0/-9
Total : 51
Note: I confess, that, I cannot help buy enjoy the Moore movies. They are, despite their flaws, better than majority of bond movies. Sorry, about this, bias.
Final Note
I have mentioned not a single thing about the many inventive chase scenes and action scenes. As is standard for this franchise, they are good. However, I found myself enthralled with the story.
I have always wondered, what would happen when Bond meets his match? How would that play out? It’s all very interesting. An extremely well done character heavy story. This movie is like a good break from all those heavy, explosion filled world ending crazy stories.
I like the simplicity of this movie, and that works for me.
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