THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974) **
This entry in the James Bond series is down in the cellar with A VIEW TO A KILL and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. The villain is boring, his only claim to fame being a third nipple (which Bond calls "an interesting anatomical titbit") and his golden gun (first owned by Oral Roberts), the climax is overly bland, consisting of a shootout in a fun house, and the murderous henchmen is played by Tattoo from "Fantasy Island," who gives Bond's knees a real pummeling, I'll tell you that.What can you say about a James Bond movie so uninspired that the writers had to bring back the annoying Sheriff Pepper character from LIVE AND LET DIE for comic relief?
Roger Moore makes his second appearance as 007 here, heading off to Thailand to trace a golden bullet that arrived at Secret Service headquarters with his name on it. Bond traces the bullet to its manufacturer, then to its sender's lover (the same woman who played Octopussy nine years later in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY... I mean OCTOPUSSY) and finally to the sender himself, the man with the golden nipple, who is out to kill Bond.
After that, there's the customary scene with Bond trapped in the villain's exotic hidden lair and the villain shares his plans to take over the world. In this case, the lair is an island off the coast of China and the plans are only to convert the world to solar power. But those environmentalists can get pretty violent for their cause. How many newspaper headlines have we all read about people who have been brutally murdered for not recycling aluminum cans? That of course leads to the climax and then about fifteen minutes of anticlimax.
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