At the time, OHMSS was seen in a poor light. While not a failure, it hadn't created the box-office boom the earlier Bonds had enjoyed. The popular perception was that it had flopped, Lazenby was dull, and the film too serious and long.
Seen in context, DAF is a reactionary movie. The producers were out to prove that James Bond was not out of date in the 1970s, and their main aim was to correct the percieved weaknesses of OHMSS. The direction chosen for that purpose was to emulate GF as much as they could.
High on that list was to bring back Connery whatever the cost. With Guy Hamilton directing, Shirley Bassey singing, US locations intrinsic to the plot, diamond smuggling replacing gold smuggling as the launchpoint for the story, and initial plans to have Gert Fröbe play Auric's twin the "GF pt 2" aspect of DAF is sometimes overlooked despite such parallel's as Sir Donald Munger's briefing being very similar to Colonel Smithers' for example.
DAF succeeded in contemporary terms. It did far better business than OHMSS, proved that 007 was not just a 60s phenomenon, and paved the way for the lighter, jokier Roger Moore films which would soon follow*. In hindsight, many flaws are apparent and time has not been kind to it but it did do exactly the job it was designed to, and some of the lines are classics!
Another nice review samurai4114 -{ and some well founded
Observations Barbel. I can remember the family sutting around
Watching DAF and laughing, It did what the producers wanted
It was a big hit and helped keep Bond going.
Later we can see how it could have had a better revenge element
but at the time, I think the main goal was to give the audience a
Fun night out.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Really excellent, well thought out reviews so far Samurai.
I definitely agree with you that OHMSS is a cinematic masterpiece with Lazenby playing Bond in a way that really adds depth to the emotional side of the film.
I also agree that DAF really wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece but that glad that doesn’t stop you enjoying it. DAF was a kind of crossroads film where the producers had to decide whether to go down the espionage route or the less serious cartoon style route, with hindsight they maybe chose the wrong one in terms of film quality (the right one in terms of what people at the time wanted) but it still gave us some really enjoyable features of DAF (Wint and Kidd, Jill St John, Connery, the whole crematorium sequence, elevator fight etc). And of course by choosing to go down the more comic route it also set the stage for LALD…
Diamonds are Forever. Yeah... this one had the potential to be great, the storyline had kept shifting and progressing up till this point. Blofeld has put the hit out on Bond's wife and now we're assuming (at least I was) that we were going to get the revenge film. The gritty, hate-fueled, final showdown between Bond and Blofeld. Right?
Except it doesn't happen. There's no motivation shown by Bond to get after Blofeld besides it being his job. After doing research of this movie, it seems like the whole revenge plot was thrown out after Lazenby rejected returning, as well as Peter Hunt. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. (This phrase is also the weirdest common phrase out there that is commonly used by people. I mean, a baby basically dies into that phrase.)
So we don't get a satisfactory closer to the rivalry we've witnessed for the past few films. (The first time I watched Diamonds I was praying for that storyline to come up. I waited, and waited, and waited, and this made my first viewing very biased towards the movie.) Needless to say I was disappointed. Has any ever major film franchise neglected this huge chunk of information, that could forever change the title character''s life? Imagine if that's how Fleming wrote the climax of the series. He would have been crucified, and fans of the novels would have burned him at the stake for that lack of ending. Theoretically, we are to assume that Bond just plays around with Blofeld's escape sub, and then jumps to his safety. Place explodes. Who knows what happens to Blofeld. He could have lived, been at large again. But that's the end. Case closed. Let's move on from all this and start fresh. That will never ever sit right with me.
And it isn't like Bond and Blofeld never come face-to-face. There's whole bloody scenes where they are alone together. You could have slipped some reference to it in that sort of boring diatribe they were on about, but it never comes up.
But I'm going to objectively look at Diamonds are Forever and try and separate it from what it could have been to what it truly is. An all right Bond film.
In some respects Diamonds are Forever is a poor man's Goldfinger. And by poor man, I mean homeless man. And by homeless, I mean penniless, with no prospects, all alone, living underneath an underpass in shabby clothes he's been in for years. (My point being, don't compare them.) But, that doesn't stop me from having a good time watching this picture and appreciating it for what it is, and not what it should have been. Guy Hamilton is back for his second go at the series, and brings his lighter approach to the franchise along with him. (Another Goldfinger research connection I found was that a early version of the screenplay had Bond fighting Goldfinger's twin, or brother, or second cousin, or somebody related to Gold finger for revenge. That's quite out there man. But consider this as well. They can weighed the possibility of Goldfinger's revenge as heavily as Bond's for his wife. That seems wrong.)
Sean Connery's back man! But he isn't that same rock that we once used to expect. He's very relaxed, (too relaxed frankly), and is a little...aged. Sean is a little older, balder, larger, greyer, than before but he's comfortable in the role at least, this being his sixth go-round. (That scene with Bambi and Thumper kicking his ass, didn't help his case though in the old and slow department.) If anything, Sean has actually improved in the comedy aspect. Diamonds is the funniest of the Connery pictures, and it doesn't seem forced. (Except for the mini sub scene with Blofeld, that was forced on us like a magician with a deck of cards.)The back-and-forth between Connery and the funeral guys is hilarious. "You wanna sit in the front Mr. Franks?" "It's a lot smoother ride into the front Mr. Franks."Yes, (thick Scottish accent) I believe I'll sit in the front." And then in the car. "So who's the stiff er, the deceased Mr. Franks?" "It's my brother." "I have a brother." "Small world." That is two of the funniest sequences in Bond history. (Better than most of Moore era pictures attempts at comedy. I'm looking at you double-taking pigeon.)
Tiffany Case is a supremely attractive Bond girl played by Jill St. John. (There's something about those redheads in these Bond flicks man...) However, St. John returns the leading lady role back to a more ditzy, clumsy character. (Like in that fight on the boat where Bond is against Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, and she just watches and cries. Eek!) Though for a someone into the diamond smuggling business, you'd expect someone a little smarter, or down-to-earth. And at times she is, but other times you cringe. I think overall St. John is more of a plus than a minus. She can't be that detrimental because that purple bikini makes up for a lot.
Blofeld returns to a more cartoonish character in Diamonds, this time it is Charles Grey, who plays his second role in a Bond. I think he actually does a good job, despite the sort of ridiculous scheme he's devised. Impersonating a celebrity for a couple of years, then smuggling diamonds to make a death ray, then we are going to meticulously wipe out separate parts of the United States. I don't know but it's a little out there for me. If the screenwriters would have kept the plot a little less take-over-the-worldish, I think it would have paid off in future viewings and been maybe a little better respected when compared to the rest.
If there are two characters who steal the show, and are far and away the best in the picture it's Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. There weirdness is so interesting, and methods so wonderfully evil that they captivate whenever they enter the frame. Even just the way they speak and finish each others sentences, "If God wanted had wanted man to fly...' "He would have given him wings, Mr. Kidd. (Emphasis on Kidd)" They even look weird, the balding, glasses, just sort of ugly face coupled with the sinister looking smile of Mr. Wint and you have quite the evil, homosexual tag-team. There awkwardness is on display at the end on the boat. (Where they are frankly, manhandled.) But still, I guess I enjoy them like some enjoy Donald Pleasance's Blofeld. Seriously though, these two should have been given the bulk of the screen-time compared to the comic Blofeld. Heck, I wish they were the main villains. It would have made a better movie.
The one truly notable fight scene is the elevator battle between Bond and Franks. (Or is it Franks or Bond I never really can remember.) Fights in tight quarters are more interesting because of the obvious challenges that go along with it. I don't know about you, but a challenged Bond, is a better Bond. After pretending to make-out with himself and faking a foreigner's accent, the two quickly dive into a glass shattering brawl. It is the one moment in the film when you're truly gripped to what is happening, because after all, this Franks guy is pretty fit. It doesn't drag on which can happen quite easily, and with the fire extinguisher you are looking at quite the deadly weapon. It's the lone action bright spot in a movie that relies more on its comedy than its physical elements. (By the way, that apartment building has to be the emptiest one ever for a fight of that magnitude to occur and NO ONE gets out of their rooms to check it out besides Case. C'mon.)
With that being said, the two chase scenes are fun. Particularly the moon buggy one just because of its bizarreness, and implications. Bond steals a lunar type transportation device from a staged moon landing set (no doubt directed by Stanley Kubrick), and it actually runs. That's bizarre. And that bit of comedy where Bond runs in at normal speed but the astronauts can't because they are walking on the lunar surface. Another funny little moment.
The one major setback, (besides that Bond feels no anquish and has no hatred for the man that killed his wife, but then the producers and writers make direct references to Tracy in later films) is that Bond is in seemingly no danger throughout the film. It could just be the uber-relaxed attitude Connery has taken towards Bond this time, but he's never stressed, never worried about anything really. Even when he's in the death coffin, sure he stomps about, but he doesn't look that rattled. When he is willingly captured at the boat rig place, (I'm sure there's a better name) he's just going through the motions, oh yeah I'm going to be rescued, Blofeld's going to let me go, AGAIN! There wasn't really that moment in this one where you asked, "How's he going to get out of this one." And that is a mistake. Like I said before, a challenged Bond makes a better Bond and he wasn't challenged much at all here.
M has had many funny little bits in the previous movies, but I think his funniest line is in this one here. The briskness and how he delivers "You're going to Holland," after Bond is going on about never visiting Africa before is just hilarious.
And one more little comedy note has to be the pun Bond gives to Leiter when looking at Franks body. "Alimentary, Dr. Leiter." I had to look up that word after first watching, but once I understood, it has become on of my favorite lines. It's quite in depth compared to the one-liners in the past.
After putting all the lack of adequate ending to Bond and Blofeld business behind me for a second, I've come to appreciate Diamonds for what it is, a funny enjoyable Bond film. This one in particular has a bit of sentimental value for me as well because this one is the first Bond my younger brother even saw. I'm pretty sure it's one his favourites and we quote it in conversations quite a lot. For instance, if one of us is alone in a room and the other is just entering we'll always say, "Making mudpies 007." Or we'll do the whole Klaus Hergescheimer bit, G section, checking radiation shields. He also does a killer Shirley Bassey impression and just screams "Diamonds are Forever" like her in the title song. We always have a lot of fun when watching this movie together, and because of it, I've grown to like it more and more over the years. But let's just say that On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds are Forever is the worst double bill family movie night, of any of the two Bonds to combine.
6/10
Another very enjoyable review, samurai4114. -{ DAF is a rather guilty pleasure for me, although I realize that in many respects it isn't a very good Bond film. As much as I rejoiced at the return of Connery (the film's biggest plus for me), the failure to follow-up on what occurred in OHMSS was a major disappointment. But for me the biggest sin of DAF, in the words of our friend Barbel, is that it ".......paved the way for the lighter, jokier Roger Moore films which would soon follow". Ugh! Still, DAF is loads of fun and although there was too much humor for my taste, at least most of it hit the mark. And as you noted, the humor is less forced than in the subsequent films. The elevator fight and Plenty O'Toole are other highlights for me, as well as the "uniqueness" of Wint and Kidd.
At the time, OHMSS was seen in a poor light. While not a failure, it hadn't created the box-office boom the earlier Bonds had enjoyed. The popular perception was that it had flopped, Lazenby was dull, and the film too serious and long.
Seen in context, DAF is a reactionary movie. The producers were out to prove that James Bond was not out of date in the 1970s, and their main aim was to correct the percieved weaknesses of OHMSS. The direction chosen for that purpose was to emulate GF as much as they could.
High on that list was to bring back Connery whatever the cost. With Guy Hamilton directing, Shirley Bassey singing, US locations intrinsic to the plot, diamond smuggling replacing gold smuggling as the launchpoint for the story, and initial plans to have Gert Fröbe play Auric's twin the "GF pt 2" aspect of DAF is sometimes overlooked despite such parallel's as Sir Donald Munger's briefing being very similar to Colonel Smithers' for example.
DAF succeeded in contemporary terms. It did far better business than OHMSS, proved that 007 was not just a 60s phenomenon, and paved the way for the lighter, jokier Roger Moore films which would soon follow*. In hindsight, many flaws are apparent and time has not been kind to it but it did do exactly the job it was designed to, and some of the lines are classics!
* and very profitable they were too.
Yeah, this was mentioned in some of the research I did. But I needed to vent a bit, and vent I did. ) Thanks Barbel!
Paul McCartney alongside Wings cry out the accompanying song to the eighth Bond installment. "When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. But in this ever-changing world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry. Say live and let die." Perhaps this is referring to Connery's Bond, but not at all likely though. Perhaps they're discussing James Bond as a young man, before he was a double-o. But most likely yet, they are putting behind the past. No more illusions of Blofeld, or Spectre, no more Tracy. This begins the second life of James Bond, 007.
Now while the series is ever-changing, the same old faces are still there. Bernard Lee is still M, Desmond Llewellyn as Q, and Miss Moneypenny is still there as the secretary to the admiral. The same elements are going to be found, (in fact, they are going to pound the "formula" they created in Goldfinger into submission.) And there are still damsels in distress, maniacal villains, and vodka martinis. Besides Roger's cigar, there is little real inanimate things that separate the two eras. But then again I haven't mentioned the biggest change of all, Roger Moore.
The first scene with Roger Moore as James Bond was a clear indication of a changing of the guard. We're going to be getting a different style of the character we know and love. That scene I'm referring to is the one where M and Moneypenny show up at Bond's doorstep at the middle of the night. We see M at his most cranky, in fact he threatens to kill Bond over him taking his spoon away for a couple of seconds. Moore appears to be very self-confident, and quite a bit posh actually. I just think of his facial expression and tone when explaining how the magnetic watch works to M. His face emotionless, and voice so upper-class. We also see that this Bond is a much more of a playboy, in fact he's hiding the girl he bedded the night before away from his superiors.
But, with all these things being said, Moore hasn't settled into the role yet, at least in my estimation. There's something missing. Compare this performance here to his even in The Spy Who Loved Me and you'll see that Moore hasn't built his own way of playing the character quite as much as he will eventually. I think in his first two pictures, he was really just relying on his acting ability to get him by. While Sean had Terrence Young, Moore wasn't really shown the ropes as much by Guy Hamilton so to speak, a man who had already directed two Bond films, and could have easily just allowed his star to relax a bit further.
Moore also doesn't exude that physical dominance that was displayed by both Connery and Lazenby. That judo chop he fires just doesn't convince as much as Lazenby's hay makers, and Sean's ability to just battle whatever the situation. But who knows, maybe he would have benefitted from Peter Hunt's motion editing, because that kick for instance he delivers in the alley appears to have nothing behind it.
Luckily for Moore, Jane Seymour is just breath-taking as Solitaire, Kananga's psychic. A true test to her beauty, she looks her best without all that makeup on when she's on the job. The two really eye-popping scenes include her in that red get-up when they try to escape San Monique, and when James and her share the bed so to speak. Solitaire's elegance is also what captures your attention, and it could just be that Moore never received a better female counterpart.
The main perpetrator is Dr. Kananga, although there is a whole villain front that goes along with this film. Voodoo and its mysticism is one of the key elements to the plot, and to me just feels not as well done as it could of been. They all seem to be frightened of something, someone has put the fear of God into them. This is quite similar to Dr. No, and I think is better pulled off in that movie. Like the whole a creature finds its way into Bond's room business, the way it is done in Dr. No is much, much better because they don't fill the scene up with all this other superfluous things going around Bond at that moment.
Kananga just feels like he should be a better baddie, but I'm just not feeling it. He's very cerebral, (a smart man who relies on psychics though, how smart can he really be) well spoken, but just isn't evil enough. The only true glimpses you see of him where he is really a menace is at the end, when he appears go have gone a little crazy. Yaphet Kotto does a good job, I wish he was given some better material to work with though, because he probably would have pulled it off.
Easily my favourite part of the movie, the moment were I was sitting on the edge of my seat, was the crocodile scene. I am personally terrified of crocodiles, so when Bond was left isolated on the platform with nothing but seemingly hundreds of these reptiles surrounding him, I put myself in his shoes. And that's what good movies do, they allow you to visualize yourself in the same situations. I really enjoyed how it shows Bond going through all the progressions of what is options are. At first you're thinking "The watch!" When you see the boat. Then he really must think, he corners himself, trying to buy more and more precious seconds of life. Now the crocs are jumping up onto the platform and are mere feet away from him. What's his escape going to be? How's Bond going to get out of this one? He will by using one of the best stunts in the whole series, jumping on the heads of live crocs like lily pads to safe ground. What a stunt. I couldn't imagine performing that one, ever. That's just too impressive.
The biggest action scene in the movie is the long, bloated chase after Bond escapes the hungry, flesh-eating crocodiles. Inexplicably, half the chase doesn't even involve Bond. Instead the crack-staff behind this picture decided to turn it into a 70s cop film for a few moments, and put us in the shoes of one Sheriff J.W. Pepper. Is there any reason to add this character, besides to elongate the chase, and the movie in the process? We are then treated to his seemingly endless presence, thanks in large part to cultural stereotypes, and a big wad of tobacco. This chase scene is a microcosm of the biggest problem I had with the movie...
Live and Let Die is just not that exciting. In fact, it is often boring. This most recent re-watch I was disappointed by its lack of truly exciting sequences. (I kept checking the runtime to see how much time was left constantly.) Before it had never been on of my favourites, but now it is becoming one of my least favourite. The PTS isn't that action-fueled (nor was it meant to be), the early moments such as the car crash, fight in the alley, or the whole Rosie Carver bit are just so-so, and the interrogation where Bond might get his finger broken just should have been better. The intensity just isn't there for a scene that requires much intensity. The two pretty good scenes is when Bond takes the flight student for a drive around the runway, and the aforementioned croc scene. And the end, I guess is pretty good. But when it had my under its thumb after the tremendous escape, it just let me down into this unneccasarily long sequence that was precisely the moment to not let up. That's when it should'be gone into top gear, and put you into a non stop action finish with the sets and sceneries to delight the eyeballs. Instead it sort of meanders on and then finishes with this stupid "revenge of the henchmen" byline that had been employed in the past. Perhaps in the other movies you could imagine the main henchmen, who had so much loyalty to its boss and probably friend, to try and take him out. But who was sitting around watching the final moments thinking, "I can't flip it out off yet because I don't know what's happened to Kananga's third or fourth favourite henchmen." Because I wasn't.
Needless to say I was underwhelmed by the first Bond in this new vein. And while this in particular was boring and bland, they wouldn't make that same mistake again. In fact, they would just make the next one so ridiculous, you couldn't turn away from the train-wreck.
Wow! That was brutal
I love LALD so that was like seeing my pet cat getting torn apart by a pack of wolves.
To me its just fun personified as a film. A times its so bizzare that you just have to laugh out loud with some completely out of nowhere action sequences and uniquely wacky villains. I’ll admit that at times it can be pretty sedate and some of the scenes could have been done better (with more tension) but for me, Kananaga is an outstanding villain because not only is he very intelligent but also just a bit mad and maybe his politeness adds to his menace because its not expected of a villain.
I think maybe you could compare Moore’s performance here to Connery in Dr No, both more toned down and more focused on the matter in hand than the caricatures they became.
Keep up the good work anyway Samuari (I might forgive you eventually ) )
Sheriff J.W. Pepper. Is there any reason to add this character, besides to elongate the chase, and the movie in the process?
Very much so- he's there to bring balance. Eon were very careful in their handling of this story. Without Pepper, the main white characters (Bond, Solitaire, Leiter) are all heroic, admirable figures while the main black characters (Kananga, Tee Hee, Rosie) are all villains. Heroic black characters (Quarrel, Strutter) and an idiotic white one (Pepper) help balance this out.
Paul McCartney alongside Wings cry out the accompanying song to the eighth Bond installment. "When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. But in this ever-changing world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry. Say live and let die." Perhaps this is referring to Connery's Bond, but not at all likely though. Perhaps they're discussing James Bond as a young man, before he was a double-o. But most likely yet, they are putting behind the past. No more illusions of Blofeld, or Spectre, no more Tracy. This begins the second life of James Bond, 007.
Now while the series is ever-changing, the same old faces are still there. Bernard Lee is still M, Desmond Llewellyn as Q, and Miss Moneypenny is still there as the secretary to the admiral. The same elements are going to be found, (in fact, they are going to pound the "formula" they created in Goldfinger into submission.) And there are still damsels in distress, maniacal villains, and vodka martinis. Besides Roger's cigar, there is little real inanimate things that separate the two eras. But then again I haven't mentioned the biggest change of all, Roger Moore.
The first scene with Roger Moore as James Bond was a clear indication of a changing of the guard. We're going to be getting a different style of the character we know and love. That scene I'm referring to is the one where M and Moneypenny show up at Bond's doorstep at the middle of the night. We see M at his most cranky, in fact he threatens to kill Bond over him taking his spoon away for a couple of seconds. Moore appears to be very self-confident, and quite a bit posh actually. I just think of his facial expression and tone when explaining how the magnetic watch works to M. His face emotionless, and voice so upper-class. We also see that this Bond is a much more of a playboy, in fact he's hiding the girl he bedded the night before away from his superiors.
But, with all these things being said, Moore hasn't settled into the role yet, at least in my estimation. There's something missing. Compare this performance here to his even in The Spy Who Loved Me and you'll see that Moore hasn't built his own way of playing the character quite as much as he will eventually. I think in his first two pictures, he was really just relying on his acting ability to get him by. While Sean had Terrence Young, Moore wasn't really shown the ropes as much by Guy Hamilton so to speak, a man who had already directed two Bond films, and could have easily just allowed his star to relax a bit further.
Moore also doesn't exude that physical dominance that was displayed by both Connery and Lazenby. That judo chop he fires just doesn't convince as much as Lazenby's hay makers, and Sean's ability to just battle whatever the situation. But who knows, maybe he would have benefitted from Peter Hunt's motion editing, because that kick for instance he delivers in the alley appears to have nothing behind it.
Luckily for Moore, Jane Seymour is just breath-taking as Solitaire, Kananga's psychic. A true test to her beauty, she looks her best without all that makeup on when she's on the job. The two really eye-popping scenes include her in that red get-up when they try to escape San Monique, and when James and her share the bed so to speak. Solitaire's elegance is also what captures your attention, and it could just be that Moore never received a better female counterpart.
The main perpetrator is Dr. Kananga, although there is a whole villain front that goes along with this film. Voodoo and its mysticism is one of the key elements to the plot, and to me just feels not as well done as it could of been. They all seem to be frightened of something, someone has put the fear of God into them. This is quite similar to Dr. No, and I think is better pulled off in that movie. Like the whole a creature finds its way into Bond's room business, the way it is done in Dr. No is much, much better because they don't fill the scene up with all this other superfluous things going around Bond at that moment.
Kananga just feels like he should be a better baddie, but I'm just not feeling it. He's very cerebral, (a smart man who relies on psychics though, how smart can he really be) well spoken, but just isn't evil enough. The only true glimpses you see of him where he is really a menace is at the end, when he appears go have gone a little crazy. Yaphet Kotto does a good job, I wish he was given some better material to work with though, because he probably would have pulled it off.
Easily my favourite part of the movie, the moment were I was sitting on the edge of my seat, was the crocodile scene. I am personally terrified of crocodiles, so when Bond was left isolated on the platform with nothing but seemingly hundreds of these reptiles surrounding him, I put myself in his shoes. And that's what good movies do, they allow you to visualize yourself in the same situations. I really enjoyed how it shows Bond going through all the progressions of what is options are. At first you're thinking "The watch!" When you see the boat. Then he really must think, he corners himself, trying to buy more and more precious seconds of life. Now the crocs are jumping up onto the platform and are mere feet away from him. What's his escape going to be? How's Bond going to get out of this one? He will by using one of the best stunts in the whole series, jumping on the heads of live crocs like lily pads to safe ground. What a stunt. I couldn't imagine performing that one, ever. That's just too impressive.
The biggest action scene in the movie is the long, bloated chase after Bond escapes the hungry, flesh-eating crocodiles. Inexplicably, half the chase doesn't even involve Bond. Instead the crack-staff behind this picture decided to turn it into a 70s cop film for a few moments, and put us in the shoes of one Sheriff J.W. Pepper. Is there any reason to add this character, besides to elongate the chase, and the movie in the process? We are then treated to his seemingly endless presence, thanks in large part to cultural stereotypes, and a big wad of tobacco. This chase scene is a microcosm of the biggest problem I had with the movie...
Live and Let Die is just not that exciting. In fact, it is often boring. This most recent re-watch I was disappointed by its lack of truly exciting sequences. (I kept checking the runtime to see how much time was left constantly.) Before it had never been on of my favourites, but now it is becoming one of my least favourite. The PTS isn't that action-fueled (nor was it meant to be), the early moments such as the car crash, fight in the alley, or the whole Rosie Carver bit are just so-so, and the interrogation where Bond might get his finger broken just should have been better. The intensity just isn't there for a scene that requires much intensity. The two pretty good scenes is when Bond takes the flight student for a drive around the runway, and the aforementioned croc scene. And the end, I guess is pretty good. But when it had my under its thumb after the tremendous escape, it just let me down into this unneccasarily long sequence that was precisely the moment to not let up. That's when it should'be gone into top gear, and put you into a non stop action finish with the sets and sceneries to delight the eyeballs. Instead it sort of meanders on and then finishes with this stupid "revenge of the henchmen" byline that had been employed in the past. Perhaps in the other movies you could imagine the main henchmen, who had so much loyalty to its boss and probably friend, to try and take him out. But who was sitting around watching the final moments thinking, "I can't flip it out off yet because I don't know what's happened to Kananga's third or fourth favourite henchmen." Because I wasn't.
Needless to say I was underwhelmed by the first Bond in this new vein. And while this in particular was boring and bland, they wouldn't make that same mistake again. In fact, they would just make the next one so ridiculous, you couldn't turn away from the train-wreck.
I knew I was going to this review (and the next one) maybe shock, or a better way to phrase it, maybe surprise some people with these views. It's not as glowing, or favourable, (it can be brutal in fact at times) but it's how I feel. If Live and Let Die is your favourite than that's fine, I enjoy when people can completely disagree about things they are passionate about. Maybe one day you'll forgive me King Kamal )
And future warning, The Man With the Golden Gun is getting crushed too.
Just out of Curiosity, have you read any of the Novels Samurai? If yes, then you will find yourself comparing them to the Films most of the Time -{
I've done one complete run through of the original novels, but have read some of the books more than the others. I've read Casino Royale a handful of times, along with Moonraker and From Russia With Love. But I also like to treat the films as their own entity, while still keeping the novels in mind.
I knew I was going to this review (and the next one) maybe shock, or a better way to phrase it, maybe surprise some people with these views. It's not as glowing, or favourable, (it can be brutal in fact at times) but it's how I feel. If Live and Let Die is your favourite than that's fine, I enjoy when people can completely disagree about things they are passionate about. Maybe one day you'll forgive me King Kamal )
And future warning, The Man With the Golden Gun is getting crushed too.
Maybe that day could be quite soon if you give that abomination the torturing is deserves: Slow and painful.
As I relax out on the balcony I peer out and look in wonderment at the lovely lake below. It's quite a vast lake, and there are about 70 or so other cottages that are set up around it. The sun which will set in about an hour, struggles to stay afloat in the western skyline, its rays reflecting on the blue H2O. Dark, green coniferous trees mark up the edges and outline of this body of water and the soft ripples of disturbed lake are calmly coming towards shore, rocking the dock as it passes. The family from two cabins down are returning inside after taking a beautiful trip around in their kayaks. And just now a youngish looking man has appeared around the bend on a pair of water-skies. He is being towed by a pair of other guys, about his age, with one of them, the driver, chuckling loudly. But at a lake like this one, it doesn't take much volume for it to reverberate around and allow the other vacationers to know what you are saying.
This has been a common occurrence the last couple of days, as I've taken residence at my own personal goldeneye for a week. Now British Columbia is no Jamaica I grant you, but the premise is the same. (But it's been as hot as Jamaica I can assure you.) I'm now hidden away on holiday, sunburnt and writing about James Bond. And that makes for a pretty good summer. At least Fleming and I think so. (Or maybe he wrote in the winters, who knows...)
The small cottage we've rented has a TV in the living room, but the satelitte reception is rather finicky. Enter the eldest teenage son, (that's me by the way) who always brings a couple of Bond DVDs on holidays, just in case. (Kind of the entertainment equivalent to the gun under the pillow.) Last night after a day of swimming and tanning, my family and I retreated indoors for dinner and a show. The meal was macaroni and cheese and the show was The Man With the Golden Gun.
My only wish though, because there isn't a lot to complain about, is that being in a serene environment, I was writing about one of my favourite Bond adventures like my beloved From Russia With Love or On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Unfortunately for me, this isn't the case because The Man With the Golden Gun is probably one of my least favourite in the whole series.
So instead of gloating about one that I adore, I'm going to slap around this movie like an unconvincing Roger Moore to Barbara Bach. (I don't mean Roger is unconvincing on the whole, but I didn't think he the type to smack around a woman for some information. I thought they were trying to change the character anyways. Like the scene at the beginning of Live and Let Die where Moore is prancing around his robe, I thought that was trying to signify the changing of the guard. But who knows...)
I'll level with you, the first forty or so minutes is quite good actually, excluding that sequence mentioned above. The premise is rather interesting, the world's best assassin, a man whom nobody can recognize, has his mark set on our favourite secret agent 007. And that's where it should have stayed. The most gripping moments of the film is when Scaramanga has Bond marked outside the Bottom Ups club, and Bond is completely oblivious. Then we discover that there is no hit, and the real evil scheme actually has to do with solar energy.
After that is when things start getting really screwy. Bond is taken away only to find that British Intelligence has travelled to Hong Kong, including Q and M. I thought a personal trip by M only occurred in potential World War III scenarios, but I guess solar energy is just as important as Bond finding the root of stolen rockets from the Americans and the Soviets.
Things begin to get goofier and goofier yet, Bond pretends to be Scaramanga and adourns a third nipple in the process. Then he gets knocked out by a midget and two sumo wrestlers, and is taken to a martial arts school. You know things we're going to get weird because of the two options this rich Chinese guy had. You could kill him, get rid of him forever and not have to deal with the hassles he provides... or you could take him to your own privately owned school of up-and-coming Bruce Lee's. Now what choice jumps out at you? "Take Mr. Bond to school." Alright let me explain the options again...
Bond engages in a battle with the sort of top dog there. He must be because of that sinister black robe, while all the other proteges are wearing white. The fight set the template for many WWF wresting matches in the future, minus the inclusion of objects such as chairs or ladders. Bond then escapes quite easily, but is followed by the swarm of the students. Luckily his local pal is there with his nieces again. (I thought he said that he was going to drop them off.) Where they kick the crap out of the people who study martial arts daily. Does that seem likely? Not really.
Even more unlikely, that they take off WITHOUT Bond. But that 's exactly what happens. They don't stop and go back for him though, and neither does Bond hang around for them to return. He quickly hops on a boat where then we are treated with the return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper. What a joke! Bond then pushes off a little salesman kid, and slices the opposition's vehicle in two. And oh yeah, Pepper is pushed into the water by an elephant. Can you spell gong show? (An interesting thing I just thought of, why in the hell is Pepper vacationing in Hong Kong. I thought one of the last places he would want to go is China, and by choice no less. He's not a worldly character, let's put it that way.)
I could continue down this ridiculous path, but I choose to stop here because there's only some much negative I want to put in one review. I will not mention; the slide whistle which pokes fun at maybe the greatest stunt ever pulled in the franchise's history, or that Scaramanga has a car-plane that he transforms and uses as he pleases, or Mary Goodnight's blatant stupidity and yet she works for the British secret service, or that scene where her ass causes the laser to to detonate, or the ridiculous circus side-plot given to Scarmanga which includes this fun-house death maze on his island, and that he has a dwarf side-kick, or that stupid final fight against Nick Nack on Scarmanga's yacht, or how M mysteriously knows the phone number of Scarmanga's yacht, and knows that Bond has defeated him, or how the score sucks and sounds eerily similar to You Only Live Twice. (I mean seriously, when the song is slowed down, there is certainly a resemblance. Not only that, but the martial arts scene is similar to ninja camp, and the sumo wrestler match is very comparable to the boxing one in this movie.) No, I won't mention any of those things because there is one good thing about it I haven't really mentioned yet.
That thing I haven't mentioned is the delightfully evil performance by Christopher Lee. An accomplished and seasoned actor, he is the only rock to be found in this picture. He's convincing, delivers his lines with this sort of maniac look in his eyes, and is really good with Moore. You needn't look any farther than the aforementioned boxing scene, when Scaramanga is giving his back-story, and then cuts to the line "but then I discovered that I liked killing more." And looks directly in Bond's eye. Chilling man.
The major flaw that I would want rectified first and foremost is the whole evil scheme. To me the whole solar energy element to the story is superfluous. I don't see why they couldn't have scaled it back and just have Bond and Scaramanga play a cat-and-mouse game, because that would be just so interesting to watch. And also cut away that circus back-story, because that I also just don't get. And there you go. You have quite the interesting film on your hands, tinker around some of the rubbish that follows and you might have an upper echelon Bond picture, because here, they swung and missed dramatically. (Oh, and also if we could have had that rumoured Alice Cooper Bond song, that would have been pretty neat as well.)
There you have it. There's a lot wrong with this movie, all the rubbish attempts at comedy, the unbelievable nature of some of the scenes, uninteresting Bond girls, a bloated plot, Moore still isn't Bond yet, crappy music, and no go to action scene. Besides that, you had a pretty good first forty minutes, and then the wretched sludge-fest that ensued.
Just a couple of minor points- it's Maud Adams that ol'Rog slaps about (Barbara Bach is in the next one) and Pepper isn't vacationing in Hong Kong or China.
The circus backstory derives from the novel, one of the few elements to survive. Tom Mankiewicz's script centred on the Bond/Scaramanga angle, while Richard Maibaum's revision brought in the Solex.
Totally agree that Christopher Lee is the best thing about this film. One of the best villains in one of the worst movies. And yes, the score is John Barry's feeblest 007 effort (he himself thought so) partly owing to being a rush job with very little time allocated for it. The main theme isn't very close in chord structure to YOLT, although the instrumentation used in a few of the instrumental versions is pretty similar.
Can you spell gong show? (An interesting thing I just thought of, why in the hell is Pepper vacationing in Hong Kong. I thought one of the last places he would want to go is China, and by choice no less. He's not a worldly character, let's put it that way.)
As you are keen to highlight every little plothole, let me do it with yours:
1. Hong Kong back in the day was BRITISH Colony and not China.
2. Pepper was vacationing in Thailand and not China/Hong Kong *
3. Like Barbel said, it was Maud Adams and not Barbara Bach
If you are taking TMWTGG and others from the Moore age seriously, you are totally on the wrong track.
They are cinema entertainment from the 70s/80s, the british Agent was a superhero and the big audiences did not want to see the gritty, brutal and Flemingesque James Bond.
* not every asian looking person is chinese
The Solar Energy plot is as realistic as Dr. No toppling missiles, Goldfinger nuking large parts of Fort Knox or the hollowed out volcano. Or a giant underground water reservoir
President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
No Higgins, My Father also thought he was hilarious )
Golden Gun, isn't the Best Bond and would be well down
My list of favourite Bonds, But Lee is fantastic -{
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
But then your father must have been as old as Acacia Avenue - in his 80s
What I really want to point out in TMWTGG are the locations, the locations and the locations.
Plus the young Britt Ekland who must have been the it-girl of the time.
BTW I am sure that many if not most secret services use pretty bimbos for their missions, so Goodnight could be a pretty realistic character
President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Me and TP have teamed up once during an Undercover Mission. But as always, he blew our Cover and we ended up spending several Months in a Siberian Prison Camp X-(
Remind me never to go on a Mission with TP again 8-)
1.On Her Majesties Secret Service 2.The Living Daylights 3.license To Kill 4.The Spy Who Loved Me 5.Goldfinger
Me and TP have teamed up once during an Undercover Mission. But as always, he blew our Cover and we ended up spending several Months in a Siberian Prison Camp
Oh, and what we had to Blow in that camp ........
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
A few things, Samurai4114...
-- I happen to agree with you on TMWTGG. Way down near the bottom of my list, and Rog's worst performance as Bond IMO. I actually think his slapping of Andrea is as bad as it gets for him, because he is simply not that kind of actor.
-- Part of the reason the Solex plot seems clunky is that it was period-specific. For those of us who lived through the 1970s energy crisis, it makes more sense. But nonetheless, this is what can happen when Bond producers decide to address current events -- the films age far less well. Fortunately, they rarely fall into this trap -- the most notable exception is TLD, whose 1987 "heroic" mujaheddin had morphed into the Taliban barely ten years later.
-- Beyond the content of your reviews, I will say again that your writing style is exquisite. The intro for this review is a perfect example -- it is scene-setting at its most descriptive and evocative (I felt as if I were there). If you are still a teenager, I can tell you that your talents at such a young age are remarkable, and you clearly have a professional future in writing if that is something you want to pursue. Just...wow.
I’ll jump in with my two cents (or two pence, to those of you across the pond).
I enjoy the heck out of TMWTGG despite its numerous flaws. And Samurai, somehow it never even occurred to me that M would have no way of knowing the number of Scaramanga’s yacht, so how and why did he call Bond at the end? So we can add that to the list of flaws.
But the film has so much going for it. 1) Christopher Lee is one of the all time great Bond villains, and here he actually has a good deal of screen time to chew the scenery appropriately. 2) The locations...oh my Lord, those locations. The film looks gorgeous and every bit of money spent on the budget is on the screen. 3) It’s actually rather plot-driven, unlike many other Bonds. I like that it has an “A” plot (Scaramanga) and a “B” plot (the Solex) and that they tie together. Even the bit about Andrea being the one who sent the bullet to MI6 is a nice, clever twist. And the fact that the film is plot-driven leads me to 4) The action is rather scaled back and believable. We have some old fashioned fistfights/kung fu hijinks, a quickie boat chase, and a car chase, then just a simple shootout at the end (with the villain’s lair being destroyed also, of course). I like that stripped-down 70s feel to the action.
And yes, you could counter every one of my points with all the things the movie has going against it, but what can I say? For some odd reason, I’m able to forgive all its problems. I’m able to look past the silliness because the movie isn’t really ABOUT the silliness – the silliness seems more of an afterthought, as though they added bad jokes to a good movie (such as the penny whistle over the car stunt). Oh, and Tom Mankiewicz has some great zingers in his script – “Speak now or forever hold your piece” is, in my opinion, one of the all-time great Bond lines.
Samurai, as Hilary Bray noted above: you are a fantastic writer. I love reading your reviews, and I’m extremely impressed by how well you write. If you want to pursue a career in writing, you’ll be remarkably successful!
Can you spell gong show? (An interesting thing I just thought of, why in the hell is Pepper vacationing in Hong Kong. I thought one of the last places he would want to go is China, and by choice no less. He's not a worldly character, let's put it that way.)
As you are keen to highlight every little plothole, let me do it with yours:
1. Hong Kong back in the day was BRITISH Colony and not China.
2. Pepper was vacationing in Thailand and not China/Hong Kong *
3. Like Barbel said, it was Maud Adams and not Barbara Bach
If you are taking TMWTGG and others from the Moore age seriously, you are totally on the wrong track.
They are cinema entertainment from the 70s/80s, the british Agent was a superhero and the big audiences did not want to see the gritty, brutal and Flemingesque James Bond.
* not every asian looking person is chinese
The Solar Energy plot is as realistic as Dr. No toppling missiles, Goldfinger nuking large parts of Fort Knox or the hollowed out volcano. Or a giant underground water reservoir
Thank you for reading! You can see that I didn't do that great a job in the research department this go-round.
1. I had learned before that Hong Kong was British colony. One of jewels to the crown of North America and India or something like that. (Social Studies 10 all over again) I just forgot or ignorantly decided to not check up on it,
2. I also made a mistake there as well. Pepper is vacationing in Thailand, but my main point is still the same. Why is he out of the country anywhere? I pegged him as a stay-cationer. (In the U.S. at least)
3. I can't figure out why I called Maud Adams Barbara Bach though. Perhaps my mind was trying to get the ball rolling on the next review. A silly mistake nevertheless.
For future reference, this isn't going to be the crap on Moore string of reviews, (besides Moonraker), I quite like Moore actually and he will be receiving favourable reviews later on. I enjoy his later movies more than first ones.
But the part of the solar energy that I don't believe, is that Scaramanga is the guy behind it. I think the idea is plausible, but for a different villain. It just seemed like they had two things going on. I would have preferred that they just have kept the first idea of keeping him as a stone-cold killer that wants Bond's blood. I just think of when Bond had landed on Scaramanga's island, and Bond gives the lecture about the solex and his operation, while Lee's just left sort of shrugging his should at times. Just something I felt.
This review was once again, brutal at times. But that's how it goes. Again thanks for reading -{
Comments
Seen in context, DAF is a reactionary movie. The producers were out to prove that James Bond was not out of date in the 1970s, and their main aim was to correct the percieved weaknesses of OHMSS. The direction chosen for that purpose was to emulate GF as much as they could.
High on that list was to bring back Connery whatever the cost. With Guy Hamilton directing, Shirley Bassey singing, US locations intrinsic to the plot, diamond smuggling replacing gold smuggling as the launchpoint for the story, and initial plans to have Gert Fröbe play Auric's twin the "GF pt 2" aspect of DAF is sometimes overlooked despite such parallel's as Sir Donald Munger's briefing being very similar to Colonel Smithers' for example.
DAF succeeded in contemporary terms. It did far better business than OHMSS, proved that 007 was not just a 60s phenomenon, and paved the way for the lighter, jokier Roger Moore films which would soon follow*. In hindsight, many flaws are apparent and time has not been kind to it but it did do exactly the job it was designed to, and some of the lines are classics!
* and very profitable they were too.
Observations Barbel. I can remember the family sutting around
Watching DAF and laughing, It did what the producers wanted
It was a big hit and helped keep Bond going.
Later we can see how it could have had a better revenge element
but at the time, I think the main goal was to give the audience a
Fun night out.
I definitely agree with you that OHMSS is a cinematic masterpiece with Lazenby playing Bond in a way that really adds depth to the emotional side of the film.
I also agree that DAF really wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece but that glad that doesn’t stop you enjoying it. DAF was a kind of crossroads film where the producers had to decide whether to go down the espionage route or the less serious cartoon style route, with hindsight they maybe chose the wrong one in terms of film quality (the right one in terms of what people at the time wanted) but it still gave us some really enjoyable features of DAF (Wint and Kidd, Jill St John, Connery, the whole crematorium sequence, elevator fight etc). And of course by choosing to go down the more comic route it also set the stage for LALD…
Another very enjoyable review, samurai4114. -{ DAF is a rather guilty pleasure for me, although I realize that in many respects it isn't a very good Bond film. As much as I rejoiced at the return of Connery (the film's biggest plus for me), the failure to follow-up on what occurred in OHMSS was a major disappointment. But for me the biggest sin of DAF, in the words of our friend Barbel, is that it ".......paved the way for the lighter, jokier Roger Moore films which would soon follow". Ugh! Still, DAF is loads of fun and although there was too much humor for my taste, at least most of it hit the mark. And as you noted, the humor is less forced than in the subsequent films. The elevator fight and Plenty O'Toole are other highlights for me, as well as the "uniqueness" of Wint and Kidd.
Yeah, this was mentioned in some of the research I did. But I needed to vent a bit, and vent I did.
Paul McCartney alongside Wings cry out the accompanying song to the eighth Bond installment. "When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. But in this ever-changing world in which we live in, makes you give it a cry. Say live and let die." Perhaps this is referring to Connery's Bond, but not at all likely though. Perhaps they're discussing James Bond as a young man, before he was a double-o. But most likely yet, they are putting behind the past. No more illusions of Blofeld, or Spectre, no more Tracy. This begins the second life of James Bond, 007.
Now while the series is ever-changing, the same old faces are still there. Bernard Lee is still M, Desmond Llewellyn as Q, and Miss Moneypenny is still there as the secretary to the admiral. The same elements are going to be found, (in fact, they are going to pound the "formula" they created in Goldfinger into submission.) And there are still damsels in distress, maniacal villains, and vodka martinis. Besides Roger's cigar, there is little real inanimate things that separate the two eras. But then again I haven't mentioned the biggest change of all, Roger Moore.
The first scene with Roger Moore as James Bond was a clear indication of a changing of the guard. We're going to be getting a different style of the character we know and love. That scene I'm referring to is the one where M and Moneypenny show up at Bond's doorstep at the middle of the night. We see M at his most cranky, in fact he threatens to kill Bond over him taking his spoon away for a couple of seconds. Moore appears to be very self-confident, and quite a bit posh actually. I just think of his facial expression and tone when explaining how the magnetic watch works to M. His face emotionless, and voice so upper-class. We also see that this Bond is a much more of a playboy, in fact he's hiding the girl he bedded the night before away from his superiors.
But, with all these things being said, Moore hasn't settled into the role yet, at least in my estimation. There's something missing. Compare this performance here to his even in The Spy Who Loved Me and you'll see that Moore hasn't built his own way of playing the character quite as much as he will eventually. I think in his first two pictures, he was really just relying on his acting ability to get him by. While Sean had Terrence Young, Moore wasn't really shown the ropes as much by Guy Hamilton so to speak, a man who had already directed two Bond films, and could have easily just allowed his star to relax a bit further.
Moore also doesn't exude that physical dominance that was displayed by both Connery and Lazenby. That judo chop he fires just doesn't convince as much as Lazenby's hay makers, and Sean's ability to just battle whatever the situation. But who knows, maybe he would have benefitted from Peter Hunt's motion editing, because that kick for instance he delivers in the alley appears to have nothing behind it.
Luckily for Moore, Jane Seymour is just breath-taking as Solitaire, Kananga's psychic. A true test to her beauty, she looks her best without all that makeup on when she's on the job. The two really eye-popping scenes include her in that red get-up when they try to escape San Monique, and when James and her share the bed so to speak. Solitaire's elegance is also what captures your attention, and it could just be that Moore never received a better female counterpart.
The main perpetrator is Dr. Kananga, although there is a whole villain front that goes along with this film. Voodoo and its mysticism is one of the key elements to the plot, and to me just feels not as well done as it could of been. They all seem to be frightened of something, someone has put the fear of God into them. This is quite similar to Dr. No, and I think is better pulled off in that movie. Like the whole a creature finds its way into Bond's room business, the way it is done in Dr. No is much, much better because they don't fill the scene up with all this other superfluous things going around Bond at that moment.
Kananga just feels like he should be a better baddie, but I'm just not feeling it. He's very cerebral, (a smart man who relies on psychics though, how smart can he really be) well spoken, but just isn't evil enough. The only true glimpses you see of him where he is really a menace is at the end, when he appears go have gone a little crazy. Yaphet Kotto does a good job, I wish he was given some better material to work with though, because he probably would have pulled it off.
Easily my favourite part of the movie, the moment were I was sitting on the edge of my seat, was the crocodile scene. I am personally terrified of crocodiles, so when Bond was left isolated on the platform with nothing but seemingly hundreds of these reptiles surrounding him, I put myself in his shoes. And that's what good movies do, they allow you to visualize yourself in the same situations. I really enjoyed how it shows Bond going through all the progressions of what is options are. At first you're thinking "The watch!" When you see the boat. Then he really must think, he corners himself, trying to buy more and more precious seconds of life. Now the crocs are jumping up onto the platform and are mere feet away from him. What's his escape going to be? How's Bond going to get out of this one? He will by using one of the best stunts in the whole series, jumping on the heads of live crocs like lily pads to safe ground. What a stunt. I couldn't imagine performing that one, ever. That's just too impressive.
The biggest action scene in the movie is the long, bloated chase after Bond escapes the hungry, flesh-eating crocodiles. Inexplicably, half the chase doesn't even involve Bond. Instead the crack-staff behind this picture decided to turn it into a 70s cop film for a few moments, and put us in the shoes of one Sheriff J.W. Pepper. Is there any reason to add this character, besides to elongate the chase, and the movie in the process? We are then treated to his seemingly endless presence, thanks in large part to cultural stereotypes, and a big wad of tobacco. This chase scene is a microcosm of the biggest problem I had with the movie...
Live and Let Die is just not that exciting. In fact, it is often boring. This most recent re-watch I was disappointed by its lack of truly exciting sequences. (I kept checking the runtime to see how much time was left constantly.) Before it had never been on of my favourites, but now it is becoming one of my least favourite. The PTS isn't that action-fueled (nor was it meant to be), the early moments such as the car crash, fight in the alley, or the whole Rosie Carver bit are just so-so, and the interrogation where Bond might get his finger broken just should have been better. The intensity just isn't there for a scene that requires much intensity. The two pretty good scenes is when Bond takes the flight student for a drive around the runway, and the aforementioned croc scene. And the end, I guess is pretty good. But when it had my under its thumb after the tremendous escape, it just let me down into this unneccasarily long sequence that was precisely the moment to not let up. That's when it should'be gone into top gear, and put you into a non stop action finish with the sets and sceneries to delight the eyeballs. Instead it sort of meanders on and then finishes with this stupid "revenge of the henchmen" byline that had been employed in the past. Perhaps in the other movies you could imagine the main henchmen, who had so much loyalty to its boss and probably friend, to try and take him out. But who was sitting around watching the final moments thinking, "I can't flip it out off yet because I don't know what's happened to Kananga's third or fourth favourite henchmen." Because I wasn't.
Needless to say I was underwhelmed by the first Bond in this new vein. And while this in particular was boring and bland, they wouldn't make that same mistake again. In fact, they would just make the next one so ridiculous, you couldn't turn away from the train-wreck.
4/10
I love LALD so that was like seeing my pet cat getting torn apart by a pack of wolves.
To me its just fun personified as a film. A times its so bizzare that you just have to laugh out loud with some completely out of nowhere action sequences and uniquely wacky villains. I’ll admit that at times it can be pretty sedate and some of the scenes could have been done better (with more tension) but for me, Kananaga is an outstanding villain because not only is he very intelligent but also just a bit mad and maybe his politeness adds to his menace because its not expected of a villain.
I think maybe you could compare Moore’s performance here to Connery in Dr No, both more toned down and more focused on the matter in hand than the caricatures they became.
Keep up the good work anyway Samuari (I might forgive you eventually
Agree with you on, I'd have given it a strong 7/ 10. -{
Very much so- he's there to bring balance. Eon were very careful in their handling of this story. Without Pepper, the main white characters (Bond, Solitaire, Leiter) are all heroic, admirable figures while the main black characters (Kananga, Tee Hee, Rosie) are all villains. Heroic black characters (Quarrel, Strutter) and an idiotic white one (Pepper) help balance this out.
I'm 100% with you on this one.
And future warning, The Man With the Golden Gun is getting crushed too.
And it deserves to be!
I've done one complete run through of the original novels, but have read some of the books more than the others. I've read Casino Royale a handful of times, along with Moonraker and From Russia With Love. But I also like to treat the films as their own entity, while still keeping the novels in mind.
Maybe that day could be quite soon if you give that abomination the torturing is deserves: Slow and painful.
As I relax out on the balcony I peer out and look in wonderment at the lovely lake below. It's quite a vast lake, and there are about 70 or so other cottages that are set up around it. The sun which will set in about an hour, struggles to stay afloat in the western skyline, its rays reflecting on the blue H2O. Dark, green coniferous trees mark up the edges and outline of this body of water and the soft ripples of disturbed lake are calmly coming towards shore, rocking the dock as it passes. The family from two cabins down are returning inside after taking a beautiful trip around in their kayaks. And just now a youngish looking man has appeared around the bend on a pair of water-skies. He is being towed by a pair of other guys, about his age, with one of them, the driver, chuckling loudly. But at a lake like this one, it doesn't take much volume for it to reverberate around and allow the other vacationers to know what you are saying.
This has been a common occurrence the last couple of days, as I've taken residence at my own personal goldeneye for a week. Now British Columbia is no Jamaica I grant you, but the premise is the same. (But it's been as hot as Jamaica I can assure you.) I'm now hidden away on holiday, sunburnt and writing about James Bond. And that makes for a pretty good summer. At least Fleming and I think so. (Or maybe he wrote in the winters, who knows...)
The small cottage we've rented has a TV in the living room, but the satelitte reception is rather finicky. Enter the eldest teenage son, (that's me by the way) who always brings a couple of Bond DVDs on holidays, just in case. (Kind of the entertainment equivalent to the gun under the pillow.) Last night after a day of swimming and tanning, my family and I retreated indoors for dinner and a show. The meal was macaroni and cheese and the show was The Man With the Golden Gun.
My only wish though, because there isn't a lot to complain about, is that being in a serene environment, I was writing about one of my favourite Bond adventures like my beloved From Russia With Love or On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Unfortunately for me, this isn't the case because The Man With the Golden Gun is probably one of my least favourite in the whole series.
So instead of gloating about one that I adore, I'm going to slap around this movie like an unconvincing Roger Moore to Barbara Bach. (I don't mean Roger is unconvincing on the whole, but I didn't think he the type to smack around a woman for some information. I thought they were trying to change the character anyways. Like the scene at the beginning of Live and Let Die where Moore is prancing around his robe, I thought that was trying to signify the changing of the guard. But who knows...)
I'll level with you, the first forty or so minutes is quite good actually, excluding that sequence mentioned above. The premise is rather interesting, the world's best assassin, a man whom nobody can recognize, has his mark set on our favourite secret agent 007. And that's where it should have stayed. The most gripping moments of the film is when Scaramanga has Bond marked outside the Bottom Ups club, and Bond is completely oblivious. Then we discover that there is no hit, and the real evil scheme actually has to do with solar energy.
After that is when things start getting really screwy. Bond is taken away only to find that British Intelligence has travelled to Hong Kong, including Q and M. I thought a personal trip by M only occurred in potential World War III scenarios, but I guess solar energy is just as important as Bond finding the root of stolen rockets from the Americans and the Soviets.
Things begin to get goofier and goofier yet, Bond pretends to be Scaramanga and adourns a third nipple in the process. Then he gets knocked out by a midget and two sumo wrestlers, and is taken to a martial arts school. You know things we're going to get weird because of the two options this rich Chinese guy had. You could kill him, get rid of him forever and not have to deal with the hassles he provides... or you could take him to your own privately owned school of up-and-coming Bruce Lee's. Now what choice jumps out at you? "Take Mr. Bond to school." Alright let me explain the options again...
Bond engages in a battle with the sort of top dog there. He must be because of that sinister black robe, while all the other proteges are wearing white. The fight set the template for many WWF wresting matches in the future, minus the inclusion of objects such as chairs or ladders. Bond then escapes quite easily, but is followed by the swarm of the students. Luckily his local pal is there with his nieces again. (I thought he said that he was going to drop them off.) Where they kick the crap out of the people who study martial arts daily. Does that seem likely? Not really.
Even more unlikely, that they take off WITHOUT Bond. But that 's exactly what happens. They don't stop and go back for him though, and neither does Bond hang around for them to return. He quickly hops on a boat where then we are treated with the return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper. What a joke! Bond then pushes off a little salesman kid, and slices the opposition's vehicle in two. And oh yeah, Pepper is pushed into the water by an elephant. Can you spell gong show? (An interesting thing I just thought of, why in the hell is Pepper vacationing in Hong Kong. I thought one of the last places he would want to go is China, and by choice no less. He's not a worldly character, let's put it that way.)
I could continue down this ridiculous path, but I choose to stop here because there's only some much negative I want to put in one review. I will not mention; the slide whistle which pokes fun at maybe the greatest stunt ever pulled in the franchise's history, or that Scaramanga has a car-plane that he transforms and uses as he pleases, or Mary Goodnight's blatant stupidity and yet she works for the British secret service, or that scene where her ass causes the laser to to detonate, or the ridiculous circus side-plot given to Scarmanga which includes this fun-house death maze on his island, and that he has a dwarf side-kick, or that stupid final fight against Nick Nack on Scarmanga's yacht, or how M mysteriously knows the phone number of Scarmanga's yacht, and knows that Bond has defeated him, or how the score sucks and sounds eerily similar to You Only Live Twice. (I mean seriously, when the song is slowed down, there is certainly a resemblance. Not only that, but the martial arts scene is similar to ninja camp, and the sumo wrestler match is very comparable to the boxing one in this movie.) No, I won't mention any of those things because there is one good thing about it I haven't really mentioned yet.
That thing I haven't mentioned is the delightfully evil performance by Christopher Lee. An accomplished and seasoned actor, he is the only rock to be found in this picture. He's convincing, delivers his lines with this sort of maniac look in his eyes, and is really good with Moore. You needn't look any farther than the aforementioned boxing scene, when Scaramanga is giving his back-story, and then cuts to the line "but then I discovered that I liked killing more." And looks directly in Bond's eye. Chilling man.
The major flaw that I would want rectified first and foremost is the whole evil scheme. To me the whole solar energy element to the story is superfluous. I don't see why they couldn't have scaled it back and just have Bond and Scaramanga play a cat-and-mouse game, because that would be just so interesting to watch. And also cut away that circus back-story, because that I also just don't get. And there you go. You have quite the interesting film on your hands, tinker around some of the rubbish that follows and you might have an upper echelon Bond picture, because here, they swung and missed dramatically. (Oh, and also if we could have had that rumoured Alice Cooper Bond song, that would have been pretty neat as well.)
There you have it. There's a lot wrong with this movie, all the rubbish attempts at comedy, the unbelievable nature of some of the scenes, uninteresting Bond girls, a bloated plot, Moore still isn't Bond yet, crappy music, and no go to action scene. Besides that, you had a pretty good first forty minutes, and then the wretched sludge-fest that ensued.
3/10
Just a couple of minor points- it's Maud Adams that ol'Rog slaps about (Barbara Bach is in the next one) and Pepper isn't vacationing in Hong Kong or China.
The circus backstory derives from the novel, one of the few elements to survive. Tom Mankiewicz's script centred on the Bond/Scaramanga angle, while Richard Maibaum's revision brought in the Solex.
Totally agree that Christopher Lee is the best thing about this film. One of the best villains in one of the worst movies. And yes, the score is John Barry's feeblest 007 effort (he himself thought so) partly owing to being a rush job with very little time allocated for it. The main theme isn't very close in chord structure to YOLT, although the instrumentation used in a few of the instrumental versions is pretty similar.
As you are keen to highlight every little plothole, let me do it with yours:
1. Hong Kong back in the day was BRITISH Colony and not China.
2. Pepper was vacationing in Thailand and not China/Hong Kong *
3. Like Barbel said, it was Maud Adams and not Barbara Bach
If you are taking TMWTGG and others from the Moore age seriously, you are totally on the wrong track.
They are cinema entertainment from the 70s/80s, the british Agent was a superhero and the big audiences did not want to see the gritty, brutal and Flemingesque James Bond.
* not every asian looking person is chinese
The Solar Energy plot is as realistic as Dr. No toppling missiles, Goldfinger nuking large parts of Fort Knox or the hollowed out volcano. Or a giant underground water reservoir
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Golden Gun, isn't the Best Bond and would be well down
My list of favourite Bonds, But Lee is fantastic -{
What I really want to point out in TMWTGG are the locations, the locations and the locations.
Plus the young Britt Ekland who must have been the it-girl of the time.
BTW I am sure that many if not most secret services use pretty bimbos for their missions, so Goodnight could be a pretty realistic character
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
( should have been called Thunderpussy Island)
Remind me never to go on a Mission with TP again 8-)
Oh, and what we had to Blow in that camp ........
-- I happen to agree with you on TMWTGG. Way down near the bottom of my list, and Rog's worst performance as Bond IMO. I actually think his slapping of Andrea is as bad as it gets for him, because he is simply not that kind of actor.
-- Part of the reason the Solex plot seems clunky is that it was period-specific. For those of us who lived through the 1970s energy crisis, it makes more sense. But nonetheless, this is what can happen when Bond producers decide to address current events -- the films age far less well. Fortunately, they rarely fall into this trap -- the most notable exception is TLD, whose 1987 "heroic" mujaheddin had morphed into the Taliban barely ten years later.
-- Beyond the content of your reviews, I will say again that your writing style is exquisite. The intro for this review is a perfect example -- it is scene-setting at its most descriptive and evocative (I felt as if I were there). If you are still a teenager, I can tell you that your talents at such a young age are remarkable, and you clearly have a professional future in writing if that is something you want to pursue. Just...wow.
I enjoy the heck out of TMWTGG despite its numerous flaws. And Samurai, somehow it never even occurred to me that M would have no way of knowing the number of Scaramanga’s yacht, so how and why did he call Bond at the end? So we can add that to the list of flaws.
But the film has so much going for it. 1) Christopher Lee is one of the all time great Bond villains, and here he actually has a good deal of screen time to chew the scenery appropriately. 2) The locations...oh my Lord, those locations. The film looks gorgeous and every bit of money spent on the budget is on the screen. 3) It’s actually rather plot-driven, unlike many other Bonds. I like that it has an “A” plot (Scaramanga) and a “B” plot (the Solex) and that they tie together. Even the bit about Andrea being the one who sent the bullet to MI6 is a nice, clever twist. And the fact that the film is plot-driven leads me to 4) The action is rather scaled back and believable. We have some old fashioned fistfights/kung fu hijinks, a quickie boat chase, and a car chase, then just a simple shootout at the end (with the villain’s lair being destroyed also, of course). I like that stripped-down 70s feel to the action.
And yes, you could counter every one of my points with all the things the movie has going against it, but what can I say? For some odd reason, I’m able to forgive all its problems. I’m able to look past the silliness because the movie isn’t really ABOUT the silliness – the silliness seems more of an afterthought, as though they added bad jokes to a good movie (such as the penny whistle over the car stunt). Oh, and Tom Mankiewicz has some great zingers in his script – “Speak now or forever hold your piece” is, in my opinion, one of the all-time great Bond lines.
Samurai, as Hilary Bray noted above: you are a fantastic writer. I love reading your reviews, and I’m extremely impressed by how well you write. If you want to pursue a career in writing, you’ll be remarkably successful!
Thank you for reading! You can see that I didn't do that great a job in the research department this go-round.
1. I had learned before that Hong Kong was British colony. One of jewels to the crown of North America and India or something like that. (Social Studies 10 all over again) I just forgot or ignorantly decided to not check up on it,
2. I also made a mistake there as well. Pepper is vacationing in Thailand, but my main point is still the same. Why is he out of the country anywhere? I pegged him as a stay-cationer. (In the U.S. at least)
3. I can't figure out why I called Maud Adams Barbara Bach though. Perhaps my mind was trying to get the ball rolling on the next review. A silly mistake nevertheless.
For future reference, this isn't going to be the crap on Moore string of reviews, (besides Moonraker), I quite like Moore actually and he will be receiving favourable reviews later on. I enjoy his later movies more than first ones.
But the part of the solar energy that I don't believe, is that Scaramanga is the guy behind it. I think the idea is plausible, but for a different villain. It just seemed like they had two things going on. I would have preferred that they just have kept the first idea of keeping him as a stone-cold killer that wants Bond's blood. I just think of when Bond had landed on Scaramanga's island, and Bond gives the lecture about the solex and his operation, while Lee's just left sort of shrugging his should at times. Just something I felt.
This review was once again, brutal at times. But that's how it goes. Again thanks for reading -{