007: Man with the Golden Gun
Originally published on social media January 23rd, 2022
On a whole, I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would and I am very glad that this was the film that reintroduced me to Roger Moore as James Bond. My sister joined me for this experience, and it was so fun having someone with a similar sense of humor to join me in laughter.
We loved the tropical vacation vibes along with the Asian travel scenes in this film. We also noticed greater diversity with closer to accurate cultural depictions. Better than any older Bond film I’ve seen so far. There was a scene that reminded us both of Karate kid 2 (but without the tea ceremony).
Roger Moore performs well as James Bond and gives him a lighter and humorous demeanor. Before watching this film, I was expecting to critique Roger Moore for this very thing, but these attributes were well balanced with calmness and the classy British air. However, it was strange to see how old Roger Moore was for this being only his second Bond film. This made his actions scenes less plausible and I was almost looking for the stunt double. Along with that, his Bond’s sexual politics were a lot more questionable than that of Connery. The only reason I mention this is that people tend to critique Connery all the time about this calling him “the most controversial Bond”, but I think it’s Moore all the way. Regardless of these aspects, Moore still gives a suave, clever, and excellent performance that is worth the watch and his flaws do not ruin the film or make it less enjoyable.
There were three characters in the film that were so obnoxious that they lost the film some points: Knick Knack, Good Night, and JW Pepper (who unfortunately appears in more films). My sister and I agreed that along with being annoying (and at times stupid), none of these characters were played by very good actors.
The film itself also took an extraordinarily long time to end, but the overall pacing of the film was great until the last 30 minutes. The sets were very well done, especially Scaramanga’s lair and shooting “range” which mimicked an elaborate, modern day escape room