Roger Moore goes into his second out pretty much the same way he went into his first...badly. Only this time it's worse. Taking the "new model" created by "Live And Let Die", the producers fashioned one of the blandest and most boring Bond films yet that slogs along from start to finish with very few highlights along the way. "The Man With The Golden Gun" could be the worst Bond films ever made...and it didn't have to be.
Instead of drug running filtered through the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, we get a film mired in the energy crisis filtered through the Martial Arts films of the 1970s. None of this works and the return of the walking redneck stereotype Sheriff J.W. Pepper (again played by Clifton James) makes no sense (since the film takes place in Thailand) and isn't even funny this time around. Toss in Britt Ekland as the worst Bond girl (until Denise Richards) and the dumbest M.I.6 Agent ever and it's a recipe for disaster.
The film starts with a marvelous pre credits sequence setting a tone for the film that rarely gets used again. Christopher Lee is easily one of the best villains of the series (although having him tied to the ridiculous subplot of the Solex Agitator is a huge mistep that even he can't recover from). Herve Villachaize's Nick Nick is one of the more interesting henchmen, but he's played more for laughs because of his diminutive size...though he does have a few moments of seriousness during the proceedings. Moore just seems to be clowning around as he moves from place to place in a seemingly random manner based on the script choices and not logic of story (cause there isn't much...even for a Bond film).
The less said about this one, the better...Luckily, Moore & company get it right for the next outing.
The third time is the charm. The writers have stopped trying to write for Connery and are now writing for Moore so the balance of comedy and seriousness is a bit more equal. The plot gets stolen from "You Only Live Twice" but works much better here. Maniacal villain with his own personal army hiding in a secret lair steals things from both the Americans and the Russians in an attempt to start World War III. Instead of Blofeld, we get Stromberg. Instead of a volcano we get an underwater base. Instead of a giant spaceship that can swallow other spaceships, we get a supertanker that can swallow submarines. Toss is the new goal (of repopulating a more perfect world underwater) and some stolen scenes from other Fleming novels as well as interesting characters, locations and gadgets and you've got a new winner on your hands.
Fleming had stipulated that the only thing they could use from the novel "The Spy Who Loved Me" was the title. Luckily, the producers of the films had stopped using much more than that a while ago. Here they had to craft something spectacular from the ground up. Moore seems much more at ease here than in the previous films. Maybe it was the new director (Lewis Gilbert returns for his second outing) or maybe it was the loss of producer Harry Saltzman (personal financial issues forced him to sell his share of the series). Whatever the case, the tone changes for the better. We even get a score by Marvin Hamlisch heavily mired in disco that barely seems to have dated in almost 40 years.
Easily one of the two best Moore films, we'd be taking a slight diversion into ultimate silliness before coming back down to Earth for the other of the best of the Moore era.
Be seeing you.
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