I enjoy this particular entry about on the same level as Moore's previous Bond flick "Live and Let Die", some intriguing elements but the final product comes out to be above average. Once again Moore is fantastic and having the awesome Christopher Lee as the villain is genius casting. I also liked how this film played around with the idea of having Scaramanga being an evil-version of Bond. It's just a shame that Lee is criminally underutilized and the plot takes a few too many detours (Ex. The really pointless martial arts tournament sequence). Thankfully, the Roger Moore era of the Bond franchise is about to finally take off in the next entry "The Spy Who Loved Me"!!

*Sigh* I know. You all must think I hate Roger Moore as Bond. I don't. He is capable as James Bond and when he and the script get it completely right, like with The Spy Who Loved Me, he can pull off his sense of humor very well. It's just that most of the movies he has been in really are quite bad. Actually, this one isn't as crappy as many of the others; I would rank it third behind The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. It still is quite mediocre.In this one, Bond is investigating a plot by the villain Francisco Scaramanga (the awesome Christopher Lee), who personally wants to kill him. Along the way, he tries to avoid sleeping with the pretty hot, but pretty useless Mary Goodnight (Why did the Moore films have most of the dumbest Bond girl names in the franchise?), gets into a car chase with the annoying Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) from the previous film, Live and Let Die, in the passenger seat and the famous "slide whistle" car spin, gets put into a martial arts school (don't ask), and makes out with Scaramanga's girlfriend (Maude Adams), who wants Bond to put him down.Christopher Lee is the actor I love watching most in the movie. He does not have a bad line or moment. He's just the absolute king here. The sad thing is, besides killing Bond, his plot isn't that much to care about. He merely wants to use a certain device to control solar power, its prices, and who gets it. It's not really a threatening plot. Like with the heroin in Live and Let Die, not everyone uses solar power. Plus, what is he going to do with the money? He seems to have a content life just challenging people to death matches with his one-bullet golden gun. Look, I'm fine with Bond villain schemes that aren't about taking over the world. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have liked films like Casino Royale and Skyfall so much. For them to work, though, a personal scheme has to hurt a lot of people for it to be a major concern, and really, the only people who will be affected by this scheme are the really rich guys that actually have solar power and the people who are targets for personal assassinations that Scaramanga gets payed for.Moore is better as Bond here, and doesn't calculate his performance so much. When he tries to be cold, however, like when he interrogates Scaramanga's girlfriend, he isn't very organic. Connery would have brought more brute strength and cold-hearted lust to it, considering that his version of Bond seems to be quite at home with moments like this. Britt Ekland as Goodnight does not do a very good job and is probably the worst actor in the film. She's pretty hot, like many of the Moore Bond girls, but useless and when Bond is trying to recover that solar power device, she almost gets him killed or seriously injured. One other character here is a smaller person named Nick Nack who serves Scaramanga. I don't understand what he wants, and besides that, he's also quite annoying. The most confounding moment is when he tells Bond that he'll inherit everything from Scaramanga if he kills him. Wasn't Nick Nack supposed to be Scaramanga's friend? But it turns out that he was still loyal to Scaramanga as he tries to kill Bond after he has sex with Goodnight. It's just confusing.Besides that, some of the action is fun, although the whole situation with the martial arts school has no purpose, and Moore's improved performance certainly helps, but the uninteresting secondary scheme of the villain and the goofy bits that seem to be a trademark of most of the Moore films don't. Bottom line, The Man With the Golden Gun has its moments, but it is very average.

The Man with the Golden Gun is a great movie with a reasonably well developed plot and a talented cast. It stands out from other Bonds as being one of the only ones where the villain really steals the spotlight. Christopher Lee is outstanding as Scaramanga, both charismatic and thrilling. Moore brings in incredibly witty dialogue and his scenes with Lee are the films highlight.There is a large lack of gadgets, which I found to be the weakest factor. I find the new machinery to be one of the funnest and most unique aspects of every Bond film, and not bringing in any this time around left me underwhelmed.The story is also extremely by the numbers, there is no plot point that is unexpected or exciting, it feels as if it's all going through the motions.More so than the action, the performances are what stand out in The Man with the Golden Gun, and I feel that is the main thing that makes it a worthwhile watch, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good adventure film. Bond searches for a missing solar device and finds himself the target of a dastardly assassin. Best Performance: Christopher Lee

Directed by Guy Hamilton and with a script by Tom Mankiewicz and Richard Maibaum, this is the ninth film in the 007 franchise and keeps Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli as co-producers for the last time. In this film, the second where Roger Moore embodies 007, the main subject will be the energy crisis and the advent of so- called green energies, issues that were very present at that time, due to the oil crisis and the beginning of ecological concerns in society.In this film, the British agent is threatened by an assassin called Scaramanga, famous for using a pistol and bullets made in gold. Discretely, Bond decides to set off in pursuit of his new enemy, with the permission of M. The clues lead him to Beirut, to the Portuguese colony of Macau and finally to Hong Kong, where Scaramanga kills Gibson under Bond's nose. Gibson was a scientist who invented a way to harness solar energy and alleviate the world's dependency on oil. Bond must now recover the stolen technology and goes to Thailand where, after many adventures, will join forces with his colleague Mary Goodnight, an English spy who is both beautiful as stupid. Finally he meets Scaramanga. The chase takes Bond to the island's villain, which takes the final confrontation, full of surprises.In this film, Roger Moore will continues the formula started in "Live and Let Die": sarcastic and calm in any situation, his Bond is also a natural seducer, kind and gentle, contrasting to the rudest posture of Sean Connery, while not giving any value to women who seduces and which quickly drops when it suits his mission. A curious note: the mechanism created by Scaramanga in his island for the use of solar energy, despite the science fiction touch, is very similar to solar panels we have today but I don't know if this was a "jules- vernian" stylish prediction or if, even then, we could logically predict the course of technology in this field. One of the most famous scenes of this film is the gold-covered woman, in a probable homage to "Goldfinger", an earlier franchise film where this scene first emerged. Another memorable scene is the car chase where Bond, to cross a water channel, makes a dangerous 360° rotation with the car, similar to Evel Knievel shows, a popular icon from these time.In addition to James Bond and Mary Goodnight (Bond-girl played by the Swedish Britt Ekland), the film brings again J. W. Pepper, which was a big hit in the previous film and works here just as comic element. The villain, Scaramanga, was played by the immortal Christopher Lee, whom the seventies ran particularly well thanks to vampire movies. His helper, the francophone dwarf Nick-Nack, was taken by the talented and funny Hervé Villechaize. The also Swedish Maud Adams embodied Andrea the second bond-girl of this movie, the only 007 movie (I think) with two bond-girls interpreted by actresses from the same country.