Not bad, for a 007 film, I mean, there are the usual ‘let’s give Bond every chance to escape we can instead of just killing him’ scenes, and it’s chilling how Bond never looks sorry when the poor girl-of-the-moment gets killed - after all he already slept with her :-/ .
In this one there’s also a blond agent called Goodnight who eagerly waits for ‘her turn’ with Bond - his exact words are “your turn will come, I promise” and it will, Bond movies usually end with him sleeping with a girl, but otherwise she’s almost completely incompetent. She’s also the one that told him she didn’t want to kill “a few hours as one of your passing fancies” only to turn up half naked in his room minutes later, and then she stays two hours hidden in the wardrobe while Bond collects his payment by Miss Anders… A brave girl, maybe, but she’s more trouble than help.This is how Bond movies liked their girls: pretty objects whose only purpose in life is to sleep with Bond once and die young, and be forgotten because who cared about girls back then…
On the other end, this time we also have two schoolgirls hwo are real kick-ass and protect Bond instead of the opposite - not sure where they were here, China or Thailand or Macau or Hong Kong, or something around there.
There’s no Spectre at all here, just an assassin, the best there is, he himself is sure of this. We start the film meeting him: we see he’s got three nipples and watch him defeat another killer provided by his faithful Nic Nac, because apparently it’s something they like to do, Scaramanga’s very own game, he has fun that way.
Once again: “Roger Moore as Jamews Bond - 007” is in the opening credits right before the title. I was not happy to also see “Clifton James as J.W.Pepper” because he was the sheriff in the previous movie and I don’t like him, so loud and arrogant and annoying (to be clear, I mean the character).
Bond knows Scaramanga by fame, of course, “the man with the golden gun. Born in a circu. Father, the ringmaster, possibly Cuban. Mother, English, a snake charmer. He was a spectacular trick-shot artist by the time he was 10 and a local Rio gunman at 15. The Kgb recruited him there and trained him in Europe where became an overworked, underpaid assassi. He went independent in the late ‘50s. Current price, $1 million a hit. No photograph on file, but he does have one distinguishing feature, however. A superfluous papilla” The third nipple, as I said. I wonder how people know about that…
M says they received a golden bullet with 007 carved in it but Bond doesn’t seem impressed. “Who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?” - M: “jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors, the list is endless”.
Let’s note, just for a laugh, that he didn’t mentioned abandoned women… either because he thinks no girl has enough money or because all they want is to have him back alive and functional, nobody knows…
M takes him out of any assignment to avoid Scaramanga ruining their operations, so Bond goes looking for him instead. Agent 002 Bill Fairbanks was killed by Scaramanga but it was never confirmed because the bullet was not found, and yet when Bond goes to Beirut to see the dancer that was with Bill when he died, there it is, in her bellybutton. He died in 69 and she still dances with it; it appears that all 00-agents are rather successful with the girls, and also that the police investigating Bill’s death didn’t do a good job since the bullet’s been there for everyone to see all this time.
She doesn’t even hide what it is, she calls it her “lucky charm”, and “never dance without it”… macabre idea, since it went through the neck of the man she was hugging… or maybe lucky because she lived…
Boss kisses her trying to take it. Even though they’re interrupted by men, Bond takes it and goes away after knocking out all those men and wrecking her changing room - but is it or was it really that easy in these clubs to go backstage and into the girls’ changing rooms?
The girl: “I’ve lost my charm!” - Bond: “Not from where I’m standing”
I wonder, where all the girls in Bond’s era treated so badly that they were starving for compliments, and his silly words were enough to have them fall at his feet?
Anyway, Bond took the charm/bullet with his mouth and the fight made him swallow it, so he goes to a pharmacy…
He takes the bulleet to be examined by Q and Colthorpe, and learns who made it. It’s a 4.2 millimeter, quite unusual but “Q-branch have been making unregular calibers for most unusual purposes” and was made by specialist Lazar, a Portuguese who lives in Macau. From him Bond learns where he’ll make the next delivery so Bond can follow the woman.
The first time he talkst o Miss Anders he hits her to get some information, “he may even use one of those little golden bullets on you. That would be a pity, because they’re very expensive”; the second time she tells him she’s the one who sent hte bullet because she wanted him involved, because she hates Scaramanga and since “you don’t walk out on Scaramanga” she wants 007 to kill him. She thinks he’s the only oen who can because of “the way Scaramanga speaks about you”. So: “name your price, anything, I’ll pay it, you can have me too, if you like” and he accepts, which is so very low, but that’s James Bond for you.
Bond goes where he thinks he’ll find him, and he’s there alright, hidden somewhere to take aim, but he doesn’t shoot Bond, he kills the target of his contract, the same man Bond was looking for before all this golden bullet stuff.
The Agency somehow knows who hired Scaramanga: rich man Hai Fat, so Bond goes there with a fake third nipple, pretending to be Scaramanga of course, not knowing that the man himself is there and watching him.
Later, Bond will be stopped by two sumo players and knocked out by Nic Nac but of course he gets stopped before he can kill him. Of course.
Hai Fat says “take Mr Bond to school” where Bond is dressed appropriately for martial arts and taken care of by girls until the school assembles. Two guys fight with swords and one is killed, but no swords with Bond, of course. When it’s clear they won’t let him go he escapes, and quite easily too, but all those presents go after him. Bond’s ally and his two nieces come to help him, and when Bond stands in front of them saying “stand back, girls”, they move in front instead and fight everyone quite proficiently. What I don’t understand is why they drive away without him, having come here to get him… it makes no sense to me, why were they here if not to get him?
So, it’s another long boat-chase scene. Hai Fai finds “nothing remotely amusing about Mr Bond’s escape”, the silly man, and goes on being even sillier by giving Scaramanga orders like a servant and reminding him that Scaramanga works for him… well, Scaramanga kills him, and the rich man was surprised, as if it weren’t what killers do.
When Bond goes to meet Miss Anders and take the “solex agitator” the Agency is after, he finds her already dead; he doesn’t bat an eye and starts looking for the solex. Scaramanga sits next to him and tells him he won’t find it because he also looked for it… and yet Bond finds it right there on the floor. Scaramanga calls it “a very great pleasure” to meet him, he feels like he knows Bond… yeah yeah.
Scaramanga says about Miss Anders: “A mistress cannot serve two masters” and “a difficult shot but most gratifying”. Bond: “well, we all get our jollies one way or another” with her dead next to him.
Goodnight now has the solex and the brilliant idea to follow Nic Nac. She’s seen and taken away by Scaramanga, of course, whwo will also take the solex. To chase after her, Bond steals a new car and finds himself next to Sheriff Pepper.. :-/
They follow the car until it turns into an airplane and flies away. The car with wings attached on its roof.
TheAgency finds her because she was wearing special Q buttons with a home device and Bond flies to Scaramanga’s island. Nic Nac welcomes him with a Don Perignon bottle that Scaramanga opens by shooting at it. And I mean ‘opens’, the bottle is perfectly intact.
Apparently Scaramanga is “so delighted to see you again” he thinks they “have so much in common”; he shows Bond around: his solar-energy station to power his very modern house, and also his powerful ray that he uses to destroy Bond’s plane. “Like every great artist, I want to creatae an indisputable masterpiece once in my lifetime, the death of 007. Mano a mano. Face to face” … does he know mano a mano means hand to hand? What’s its meaning here? It’s not a fist fight, it’s a duel that they start on the beach but continue in the place where Scaramanga always plays. It’s not even that difficult for Bond to kill him, because unlike everyone else when he has the shot he takes it, he doesn’t warn him beforehand… Bond goes to take the solex then he and Goodnight try to escape because the place is blowing up - because of something she did, pushing a man to his death into a pool of some liquid helium that must remain at “absolute zero”, but the man’s body rises the temperature or something. Not sure where the guy was taking her or what he was doing, but it doesn’t matter.
Quite convenientlythere’s an old-looking ship they can use to escape the island.
No surprise, Nic Nac shows up trying to kill him but Bond traps him inside a huge suitcase and then traps him in a rome cage up the ship’s mast.
So now Bond and Goodnight can finally sleep together.
Although they already did two years before, they said that a few times.
James Bond is Roger Moore
Scaramanga is Saruman… sorry I mean Christopher Lee
Goodnight is Britt Ekland
Andrea is Maud Adams (… is this Miss Anders?)
Nic Nac is Herve Villechaize
JW Pepper is Clifton James
Hai Fat is Richard Loo
M is Bernard Lee
Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell
Lazar is Marne Maitland
Q is Desmond Llewelyn
Saida is Carmen Sautoy (the dancer in Beirut)
“The end of The man with the Golden gun”
“James Bond will return in The spy who loved me”.
P.s. Wait, it was a golden gun, not made of gold then, just covered in gold, then? Oh, that’s a bit disappointing, and I’m only just realizing now… :-/ because the Italian title says it’s gold so I always though it was made of gold, not just yellow…
ITA L’uomo dalla pistola d’oro
No comments:
Post a Comment