Fellmans Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

The Man with the Golden Gun is the ninth James Bond film in the franchise and the second with Roger Moore as 007. It stars Christopher Lee as the villain, and his midget companion as they try to steal a solar device to sell back to the global community. In a simultaneous plot, Scaramanga, Christopher Lee’s villain, wants to duel Bond as a test of skill and he thinks only Bond is worthy of his abilities. This is probably my least favorite so far of the Bond movies, including the George Lazenby “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. It’s almost a buddy movie. They tried to make it a comedy, almost. What’s with the racist sheriff? Is that a James Bond character? 

What’s it about? We start on a beach where we see a man and a beautiful woman bathing in the sun. His servant then leads who appears to be an assassin into the house to await him and calls him in. The man comes in and a fun house begins, and they chase each other until the man kills the assassin. Back in London, a golden bullet is received by MI6 with the number 007 on it. Bond traces the bullet back to a gun maker in Macau and makes him reveal how he ships the bullets. Bond then follows the bullets to Andrea Andrews hotel room. Scaramanga’s mistress. He makes her give up information about Scaramanga and the bullets. He heads to the Bottoms Up Club where Scaramanga murders Gibson, the agent who was working on the case that Bond was working on before. Later, Bond travels to Hai Fat’s compound. A wealthy Thai entrepreneur who is suspected of arranging Gibson’s murder. Bond gets into the compound by wearing a fake third nipple but is found out because the real Scaramanga is already there. Bond escapes the compound and reunites with his assistant, Mary Goodnight. Later, in the hotel room, Anders reveals that she wants Bond to kill Scaramanga and then goes back to him. The next day, at a muay thai boxing event, Bond meets her, and she is cold and lifeless with a bullet through her chest. So, Bond starts looking through her purse when Scaramanga appears next to him and introduces himself. Bond sees the solar device on the floor while Scaramanga is talking and manages to smuggle it out of the event and get it to Goodnight who gets thrown into the back of Scaramanga’s car. Bond then goes on a high-speed car chase with them through the streets of Hong Kong until they get to a barn which houses wings for Scaramanga’s car, that he somehow attaches and takes off. Flying back to his base. Following a homing beacon that Goodnight had activated before she got thrown in the trunk, Bond follows Scaramanga with a plane to his secret base where Scaramanga is more than willing to show him all his equipment and give him the tour like a usual villain does. What Scaramanga really wants is to duel Bond in a 50/50 chance duel of the titans. Which Bond eventually wins. And then they have to retrieve the solar device and escape the island before it quickly explodes.  

What’s good? It’s got its moments. I guess the car chase scene was alright. The obligatory Dukes of Hazard sequence is in there. That seems to keep cropping up in each film now. That wasn’t always there.  

What’s bad? The racist-ass sheriff. I don’t know whose idea it was to put him in there, but it wasn’t a good one. Just to pull some racist-ass Boss-Hogg sheriff from Louisiana and put them in Hong Kong? How is that good writing? But, hey, I didn’t make it… 

The actors? Literally, one of the greatest actors of all time, Christopher Lee, is in this movie. Now, that doesn’t automatically make it good. But it does at least lend some credence to the scenes what you are seeing.  

The effects? The spiral jump with the car was done with a real car. Like, props on that. The air car was done with a remote-control car shot at a distance. Everything else was practical effects.  

Superfluous third nipple? What an odd Bond villain deformity. A superfluous third nipple. Krusty the Klown has a superfluous third nipple on The Simpsons. Who’s next? Who’s the next superfluous third nipple buddy? 

Who would pay one million to have me killed? I’m willing to bet a lot of people would pay one million to have James Bond killed. How many women has James Bond slept with over the years? How many people has James Bond killed over the years? The numbers must be huge… 

Hits Bond so hard he swallows her belly ring. What was he doing that when he hit Bond it made him swallow her belly ring? Talk about secret agent stuff, right? 

What the hell is Lazar. Bond knows so much about everything; you’d think he would know something like that already.  

Does the bellboy let anybody in? Does the bellboy just let anybody into any room without even asking them if they’re in there? He just lets people into rooms without asking them what room they’re in. “Can you let me in this room?” “Oh, yes, sure…” That’s not secure at all… 

Christopher Lee. I’m only ever used to seeing Christopher Lee as an old man, I’ve never seen him like that before. It’s crazy. It’s definitely him though. You can obviously tell it’s him. With his face and his voice. It’s weird.  

The sumo ass-grab. When the sumo wrestler picks up Roger Moore and he grabs him by both ass-cheeks, what was that meant to accomplish? Is that some sort of move? The sumo ass-grab? I don’t think it’s an effective one.  

Sword fight death match. That turned into a sword fight to the death pretty quickly. Like, they weren’t doing anything. And then, all the sudden, they were fighting to the death with swords… Like, where did that come from? Was that on the schedule? Or did somebody just pull some swords out and was just like “hey… go fight with swords now…” 

Why did they drive off? Why did they drive off and leave Bond behind? He was clearly running behind the car. Why didn’t they wait the five seconds for him to run around to the other side of the car and get in? And they were even laughing as they drove away. Like, kind of a “screw you” on top of it… 

Phuyuck. Who named that wine? Asian languages are already hard enough to pronounce you gotta make their names sound gross, too? Come on. Don’t do it to yourselves. 

Is she just in the closet? Is Ms. Goodnight just hanging out in the closet while Anders and Bond have sex in the other room? She was there for two hours. She just sat in there for two hours while those two had sex in the other room. The least they could’ve done was invite her… 

Obligatory Dukes of Hazard scene. It seems to me that there’s an obligatory Dukes of Hazard-like scene in every movie as of late, where somebody’s crashing into something, or somebody’s jumping over something, or somebody’s spinning over something. Maybe it’s just me.  

Racist Boss Hogg. Maybe it’s just the inclusion of the hillbilly Boss-Hoss character that’s making the connection. If that weren’t there, I might not be making the same connection to it.  

Shut up, Q. M seems awfully short with Q as of late. He’s hardly listening to any suggestions that Q has to offer. You’d think he would value somebody’s opinion like that.  

Why couldn’t Goodnight find the button? It was a button. A single button. She had already pushed one of the buttons with her ass. She couldn’t find the other button to push with her finger? 

He puts the midget in a suitcase. Solved that problem, didn’t I? You sure did, Bond. You sure did… 

So, yeah. Go and see Man with the Golden Gun. If for nothing else just because it’s next in line. But don’t expect too much. It’s alright. Still a Bond film. But not great. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…