THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN feels like it is Moore’s first film, shot on the sly during a stolen weekend in Thailand. Filmed on the coat-tails of LIVE AND LET DIE and released only a year later, it plays as more of a modest debut than a second outing. And it held its world premiere in London fifty years ago on December 19th 1974.
Yet, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN does not want to mimic the jaw dropping ambitions of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE or the hermetically sealed spy world of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. It borrows its cues from the backstreets and bayous of LIVE AND LET DIE, GOLDFINGER‘s clash of manners and the biting camp of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. It may not introduce any tropes the Bond series adopts forever more, but GOLDEN GUN is still marked by its fair share of extravagance, style, and novel thrills.
It is also the most kink-ladened of all the Bond films – replete with a marked 1974 sense of sex, flesh, sexuality and sadism.
Part of the fun of BOND ’74 is how very self-aware it is. GOLDEN GUN is a great Bond bullet for trading on the myth of Bond and the myth of Bond as played by Roger Moore. Co-written by the 1970s genius of franchise tone that is Tom Mankiewicz (the bickering alone is priceless) and almost scored on the run by composer John Barry, it is a Bond bullet about verbal jousts, dying empires, 1970s sexuality, DRACULA on an island, prescient energy concerns, THE STEPFORD WIVES creeps, British internationalism meets Bruce Lee pop-culture and a flying station wagon.
สุขสันต์วันครบรอบห้าสิบปีของ THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN!
