Shaken, Not Stirred takes a (brief) look at the James Bond canon from Eon Productions. Twice a month, Chris and Jon share their impressions of each film, both on its own terms and in terms of the cultural landscape as well as the genre it helped to create, not to mention its intersection in the Cinema Dual hosts’ lives.
FROM THE (LETTER)BOX(D): THE WORLD’S GREATEST VILLAINS TRIED TO KILL JAMES BOND…NOW IT’S SCARAMANGA’S TURN TO TRY! Cool government operative James Bond searches for a stolen invention that can turn the sun’s heat into a destructive weapon. He soon crosses paths with the menacing Francisco Scaramanga, a hitman so skilled he has a seven-figure working fee. Bond then joins forces with the swimsuit-clad Mary Goodnight, and together they track Scaramanga to a Thai tropical isle hideout where the killer-for-hire lures the slick spy into a deadly maze for a final duel.
WHAT CHRIS THOUGHT: A small glimpse into the inner workings of this series. Typically, Jon gets his thoughts in before me. I’m old and partial to frequent “jazz picnics,” the one benefit of note here being that I get to preview Jon’s thoughts and reconcile them with my own. Which is going to be interesting here because I was going to open my own thoughts on The Man With the Golden Gun as the platonic ideal of a James Bond movie, at least in terms of what made me fall in love with the series as a kid.
Does that mean this is a particularly good movie? Of course not. But it is an effective movie, one that much more fits Moore’s introduction as 007 than Live and Let Die did. Even director Guy Hamilton, here in his fourth and final turn as director for the series, couldn’t ignore the beautiful vistas for his terrible rear-projection shots. It’s as if the entire cast realized what a dud the last film was, and put their all (for what that was worth) into making the most James Bond film they could make.
And whaddaya know…it works! Kind of! Moore comes off much more capable here than he did in his debut, taking his GCF (Gentleman Casanova Fop) energy and making it work, even in the jarring extremes of kissing a belly dancer to swallow the golden bullet implanted in her navel or savagely battering Maude Adams when she won’t divulge Scaramanga’s whereabouts. Speaking of the actors, Christopher Lee and Hervé Villechaize at this point are hands-down the best villains the series has brought to date, both actors exuding very different vibes that work great together and provide more inspiration than most when it comes to their diabolical plans and ulterior motives.
WHAT JON THOUGHT: The Man With the Golden Gun is not the platonic ideal of a Bond movie. The theme song weirdly just describes the plot very plainly. The awful sheriff JW Pepper from the last movie is shoehorned into this one on the flimsiest of premises. Britt Ekland manages to outpace Gloria Hendry for the title of “least necessary Bond girl.” The orientalism on display is much more muted than on You Only Live Twice but doesn’t escape it entirely. And the literal slide whistle that accompanies the big car jump might just be the worst thing I’ve heard in this series.
I do want to get the complaints over with up front because other than the above, this is straightforwardly a pretty good entry in the franchise. The lion’s share of the credit goes to Christopher Lee as Scaramanga, who it should go without saying, more than lives up to the stellar way the movie sets him up. After Scaramanga opens the movie by showing off his superfluous third nipple, he hunts another assassin for sport. Following that, Bond gets a golden bullet with his number on it, and the message could not be more clear. Scaramanga wants Bond dead, and all other missions have to be canceled until he is dealt with.
Ultimately it turns out that Scaramanga’s intentions and Bond’s other mission are all entangled and complicated, but the movie delivers on the premise that is set up at the film’s outset. More than that, any of the scenes involving Moore and Lee are just delightful in their banter, and reminded me of why I liked Goldfinger so much as a villain. Their gentlemanly rapport almost obscures the deadly showdown that you know is coming. With an actor as charming as Christopher Lee, you can’t really miss.
ANYTHING ELSE, CHRIS? Delicious as the actors are (poor Britt Ekland gets bupkis as the most incompetent MI6 agent ever, except I kinda love she makes it her mission to have sex with Bond, further reinforcing his worth to HMSS as nothing more than a sex tool), it’s the set pieces that bring me back to my childhood and cement the things that originally drew me to the series. Despite my disgust at Hamilton bringing back Sheriff JW Pepper, I forgive it because the car chase is incredible, and you can see Moore doing everything he can to sell the performance of a top driver. The shot of the car spinning as it jumps the bridge is definitely diminished by that terrible slide whistle — no idea what John Barry was thinking there — but I can’t deny the power of seeing a practical stunt like that in action. Throw in a killer fight sequence to bring in the martial arts craze sweeping cinemas at the time, and even get Bond in on the action in a scene so insane, I played it twice just to make sure I wasn’t too high.
I wasn’t. James Bond just punched a guy, bowed, and jumped through a second-story bamboo window.
Amazing.
Same with the incredible location shooting. This looks like a Bond film through and through, right down to the scene where Scaramanga and Nick Nack somehow have a plane attached to their car, leading to a thrilling moment when they drive out of a barn and take off into the sky. It’s such a crazy scene it works, and those are the kind of surprises I want in a Bond film. And I really enjoy the touch here of making Bond incredibly intelligent, as if he’d gone to all the best schools, but still relatively bad at actual spy craft. His casual knowledge of things like solar energy and mechanical engineering make him surprisingly competent, but all the competence in the world can’t stop a rogue fanny from hitting the wrong button on a control panel, causing a searing solar laser to almost kill Bond.
ANYTHING ELSE, JON? The bulk of the movie’s praise does and should go to Christopher Lee, but there are other acting accolades I want to mention here. It might be in service of gassing up Scaramanga, but I like how Roger Moore, who is used to having the mission explained to him, on multiple occasions becomes the plot exposition device himself. His traditional back and forth scenes with M and Moneypenny are as sharp as ever, and I enjoyed Desmond Llewelyn tracing the gold bullet back to the manufacturer.
But the other memorable performance in this movie is Hervé Villechaize as Nick Nack. He is convincingly mischievous enough that when he’s luring in Marc Lawrence’s gangster Rodney to his doom, I thought he might actually be turning on his boss. He’s got an iconic look and a great voice, and until the end, they blessedly don’t really take note of his height. I do think the way he goes out at the end almost ruins it, but I think Nick Nack deserves a spot in the pantheon of henchmen.
THE FINAL WORD(S): For Jon, The Man With The Golden Gun is a fun, straightforward Bond adventure anchored by a great villain. For Chris, it’s everything that made him fall in love with the series as a kid, and the warts on screen just made it more fun.
NEXT TIME: IT’S THE BIGGEST. IT’S THE BEST. IT’S BOND. AND B-E-Y-O-N-D IN THE SPY WHO LOVED ME!
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