Movie Review: The Man With The Golden Gun

Wikipedia:

An American gangster, Rodney, visits famed crack shot hitman Francisco Scaramanga to kill him and collect a bounty, but he is directed into a funhouse section of the estate, where Scaramanga eventually retrieves his golden gun and kills him.

In London, a golden bullet etched with ‘007’ is received by MI6; it is believed to have been sent by Scaramanga, but because no one knows of his appearance outside of having a third nipple, M relieves Bond of his current mission involving the location of a solar energy scientist named Gibson.

At a hint from Moneypenny, Bond sets out unofficially to locate Scaramanga, first by retrieving a spent golden bullet from a belly dancer in Beirut. He traces the bullet to a gun maker in Macau, and forces him to reveal how he ships the bullets. Bond follows the shipment carried to Hong Kong by Andrea Anders, Scaramanga’s mistress. In her Peninsula Hotel room, he coerces her to expose information about Scaramanga, his appearance and his plans. She directs Bond to the Bottoms Up Club where Scaramanga snipes Gibson when he steps outside, and Scaramanga’s midget assistant Nick Nack steals a small device called the Solex Agitator off his body. Bond, who had pulled out his pistol outside the club, is arrested by Hong Kong police lieutenant Hip. But instead of going to the station, he is transported to the wreck of RMSĀ Queen Elizabeth in the harbour where he meets M and Q, and is assigned to work with Hip to retrieve the Solex.

Bond travels to Bangkok to meet Hai Fat, a wealthy Thai entrepreneur suspected of arranging Gibson’s murder. Posing as Scaramanga by showing off his fake third nipple, Bond is invited to dinner, but his plan backfires because unbeknownst to him, Scaramanga himself is operating at Fat’s estate. Bond is captured and taken to Fat’s martial arts academy, where the students duel to the death and then are instructed to kill him. Bond battles high grade scholar Chula. Escaping with the aid of Hip and his nieces, Bond speeds away on a long-tail boat along the river, and reunites with his assistant, Mary Goodnight. Scaramanga subsequently kills Fat with his golden gun and assumes control of his empire and the Solex.

Anders reveals to Bond that she sent the bullet to London. She wants him to kill Scaramanga, and promises to give him the Solex as they spend the night together. At a Muay Thai boxing event the next day, Bond finds Anders sitting and staring silently, dead from a bullet to the heart. Scaramanga arrives and introduces himself to Bond, but Bond is able to smuggle the Solex to Hip, who passes it to Goodnight. When Goodnight follows Nick Nack to place a homing device on Scaramanga’s car, Scaramanga traps her in the car’s boot. Bond discovers Scaramanga driving off and steals an AMC Hornet from a showroom to give chase, coincidentally with the holidaying J.W. Pepper (the Louisianan sheriff Bond encountered in Live and Let Die) sitting inside. The chase concludes when Scaramanga’s AMC Matador hides in a building and then transforms into a plane that flies off.

Tracking Goodnight’s homing beacon, Bond takes a RC-3 Seabee seaplane and flies to Scaramanga’s island in the Red Chinese waters. Scaramanga welcomes and shows Bond the solar power plant facility that he has obtained from Hai Fat, the technology for which he intends to sell to the highest bidder. While demonstrating the equipment, Scaramanga uses the solar-powered energy beam to destroy Bond’s seaplane, preventing him from escaping.

During lunch, Scaramanga proposes a pistol duel with Bond on the beach. With Nick Nack officiating, the two men take twenty paces, but when Bond turns and fires, Scaramanga has vanished. Nick Nack leads Bond into Scaramanga’s manor and funhouse section. Bond eventually outwits and kills Scaramanga by posing as his mannequin. Goodnight kills Scaramanga’s security chief Kra, but the latter’s fall into a liquid helium vat causes the plant’s temperature to spiral out of control. Bond retrieves the Solex unit just before the plant is destroyed, and they escape unharmed in Scaramanga’s Chinese junk. After Bond fends off a final attack by Nick Nack, he romances Goodnight.

***

  • First of many for Roger Moore
  • Cheesy Aliases and everything else you could want.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *