The Man With The Golden Gun
by Guy Hamilton
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DVD details
Actor: Britt Ekland, Christopher Lee, Hervé Villechaize, Maud Adams, Roger MooreDirector: Guy Hamilton
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Cinematographer: Oswald Morris
Producer: Albert R. Broccoli
Producer: Charles Orme
Producer: Harry Saltzman
Writer: Ian Fleming
Writer: Richard Maibaum
Writer: Tom Mankiewicz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Thai (Original Language); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-22
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Man With The Golden Gun
DVD Review: Underrated-- for all the right reasons
Summary: 4 Stars
Bond film directors get little scrutiny, yet, despite the obvious fact that this is a producer-driven franchise, there are definite hints of an individual stamp on certain series entries, and never more so than with the four films helmed by Guy Hamilton. Consider him the Tim Burton of 007 movies. His Bonds, like Burton's Batmans, are odd comic-book affairs, rife with surreal flourishes, dashes of sadism, and a general sense of childish mayhem. With "Goldfinger" he helped seal the winning James Bond 'formula', but when he returned to helm three more Bonds in the early 70s, he seemed set to deconstruct that formula.
"The Man With the Golden Gun" is his last outing, and only Roger Moore's second, and like "Live and Let Die" it definitely belongs in that earlier, "Goldfinger"-inspired world. Oscar-winning cinematographer Ted Moore did his last work on a Bond film here, and it's miles away from the inviting, disco-slick sheen that marked "The Spy Who Loved Me" three years later. Whether or not there was budgetary restraint on this film, in many ways "The Man With the Golden Gun" seems determined, in big ways and in small, to get away with doing the bare minimum for a Bond movie-- and subsequently, there's an odd, dreamlike resonance to the film's eerie blankness. Perfect example: whenever a Bond villain's hidden fortress is penetrated, we're treated to the spectacle of a few battalions' worth of jumpsuit-clad anonymous henchmen busy with their boss' nefarious work. But not here!: no, Scaramanga's compound can only boast, besides the duplicitous Nick Nack, who's really a third-party unto himself, but one single lousy thug! Who is readily dispatched by Britt Eckland's Goodnight, who is easily the dopiest Bond heroine ever. And, for that very reason, I find something surreally threatening about him, the lone Cerberus of Scaramanga's Hadean funhouse.
Scaramanga, played by Christopher Lee, belongs to the small anti-tradition of virile Bond villains, like "Thunderball"s Largo and "Licence to Kill"s Sanchez. He is the least apocalyptic of all Bond nemeses-- for him no grandious visions of blowing up the planet or even ruling it. Despite the film's OPEC-era MacGuffin, Scaramanga poses the least credible threat to civilization of any Bond villain. But this only heightenes the tangible sense of this murderous free agent's psychosis. Even Largo and Sanchez work to run an organization--Scaramanga has not only the smallest payroll of 007 badguys, he even professes a carefree ignorance of how his hidden fortress' scientific apparatus works! Far from imbibing any cuddly pet obsessions like a fetishistic love of gold, he lives only for the pleasure of murder-- and a murderous sexual sadism. Though he apes a certain distorted code of chivalry, Bond rightly calls him on it; at bottom, Scaramanga is a nightmare distortion of James Bond, all uncultivated, loner murderous sadism. It is sometimes said that Lee doesn't get the chance to flesh the character out, but think about it-- with this character, less is more, and in this minimalist cartoon of a film, Scaramanga may emerge as the most Shakespearean and least Marlovian (in Harold Bloom's terms) of all James Bond villains.
Of the ladies, obviously Maud Adams is more affecting than poor Britt Eckland, but let's say that Eckland's Goodknight is the comic relief in this otherwise rather dark (by the escapist standards of the series) movie. I agree that the slide whistle during the corkscrew car stunt is an unworthy intrusion, yet it seems to fit the distanced attitude this film takes to its action sequences. It's as if Guy Hamilton wants only the squaring-off of the gunsmen, with nothing else to intrude. Bond's interlude at the deathly martial arts academy is safely quarantined from the rest of the film, especially with the help of the proto-Austin Powers cadre of karate-kicking teenyboppers (the film's closest thing to a display of girl power!). Though the Lulu theme-song is much derided, I'll bravely pronounce that I think it rocks, and John Barry's score throughout is admirable stuff, in keeping with his best Bond tradition. Roger Moore himself is still the dark cad of a 007 he played in "Live and Let Die", in his own way as callous and gleefully destructive as Bugs Bunny. Thank god his heart's with the British Empire!
And, in conclusion, I'll salute one further much underrated aspect of the film-- that final (before, that is, containing Nick Nack on the boat) suspense sequence dislodging the MacGuffin from the laser. Simple, simple stuff, but watching those clouds pass in ominous interlude as the Thai sun waits to fry 007 and (in a less harrowing sense) Britt Eckland's bikini-clad oblivious self with him, I sometimes think I haven't enjoyed such a moment so much since Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint dangled somewhere beneath George Washington's chin! . . .
Description of The Man With The Golden Gun
Scaramanga is a hit-man who charges a million dollars per job. He becomes linked to the death of a scientist working on a powerful solar cell and James Bond is called in to investigate. As he tracks down Scaramanga he realises that he is highly respected by the killer but will this prove to be an advantage in the final showdown?Run Time: 126 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG UPC: 027616073990 Manufacturer No: M107401The British superspy with a license to kill takes on his dark underworld double, a classy assassin who kills with golden bullets at $1 million a hit. Roger Moore, in his second outing as James Bond, meets Christopher Lee's Scaramanga, one of the most magnetic villains in the entire series, in this entertaining but rather wan entry in the 007 sweepstakes. Bond's globetrotting search takes him to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally China, where Scaramanga turns his island retreat into a twisted theme park for a deadly game of wits between the gunmen, moderated by Scaramanga's diminutive man Friday Nick Nack (Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize). Britt Ekland does her best as the most embarrassingly inept Bond girl in 007 history, a clumsy, dim agent named Mary Goodnight who looks fetching in a bikini, while Maud Adams is Scaramanga's tough but haunted lover and assistant (she returns to the series as the title character in Octopussy). Clifton James, the redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die, makes an embarrassing and ill-advised appearance as a racist tourist who briefly teams up with 007 in what is otherwise the film's highlight, a high-energy chase through the crowded streets of Bangkok that climaxes with a breathtaking midair corkscrew jump. Bond and company are let down by a lazy script, but Moore balances the overplayed humor with a steely performance and Lee's charm and enthusiasm makes Scaramanga a cool, deadly, and thoroughly enchanting adversary. --Sean Axmaker
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