The Man With the Golden Gun
Published August 7, 2015
Film info
- Title The Man With the Golden Gun
- Director Guy Hamilton
- Year 1974
- Run time 2hrs 5m
- Genres Action, Adventure, Thriller
- Tagline The man with the golden gun is ready to assassinate James Bond
After his life is threatened, Roger Moore as 007 is lured into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a million-dollar killer.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 1:22 | Nubbin! The source of all his powers no doubt. |
| 12:19 | “Who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?” Jealous husbands top of the list, ha! |
| 23:30 | Love a master craftsman at work. |
| 25:25 | What’s the buckets in a casino thing about? |
| 28:14 | No one can be called Goodnight. Good morning, Goodnight. That’s just silly. |
| 38:35 | Scaramanga’s junk boat is lovely. |
| 40:24 | The sidewaysness of the boat is confusing me a lot! |
| 42:25 | Worrying how relevant this energy chat still is. Thirty years later. |
| 52:33 | A gong would be a pretty horrible alarm clock. |
| 56:33 | I’ve always thought the elbow was an underrated weapon. |
| 57:27 | “Forgot to tell you, their father runs a karate school.” Properly amazing. |
| 59:09 | Roger Moore is to boats as Tom Cruise is to motorcycles. |
| 1:03:13 | Sheriff! |
| 1:13:09 | Bad night for Goodnight. |
| 1:20:16 | Chasing after the bad guys when you’re protecting the solar thing doesn’t seem smart. |
| 1:20:42 | “Somebody locked me in a boot.” Love the matter of fact way she said it. |
| 1:24:08 | There goes the local police. |
| 1:27:08 | Still can’t get my head around how the car does that! So good. |
| 1:29:48 | Where we’re going, we don’t need roads! |
| 1:36:45 | “How do you like my island?” Flipping amazing! |
| 1:56:41 | OMG, cloud drama. |
Conclusions
I really enjoyed this one. It gets off to a supremely weird start, the chase through the circus only to shoot off the fingers of a James Bond waxwork? Bizarre. But the big showdown is in the same location, so it all coming round in a big circle did make it a nice journey in the end.
I loved the characters - rather than the normal bad guy trying to take over the world, instead Bond is chasing a hitman who is in turn after him. It felt more like the Sherlock vs Moriarty relationship, particularly once they were both on the island talking about how best to face off.
Christopher Lee was menacing, Nick Nack was a lot of fun, and the Sheriff’s return was fab, but I did think Bond was a bit out of sorts in places. Bending the girl’s arm behind her back felt very out of character, he’d seduce her in a minute normally.
There were some fab visuals too: the off-kilter base for M and Moneypenny, the amazing shots of a plane flying low through the islands, that brilliant island bunker itself. Great stuff, loved the film, just felt a bit too long overall.
Rating: 4/5.
Rating: 4 / 5
