Movie Review: The Sea Wolves (1980)

Genre: War Adventure

Director: Andrew V. McLaglen

Starring: Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven, Trevor Howard, Barbara Kellerman

Running Time: 120 minutes

Synopsis: In British India of 1943, Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Captain Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) uncover a German transmission station located on a ship anchored in the Portuguese-controlled port of Goa. Unable to mount a military operation in neutral territory, Pugh and Stewart turn to Colonel Grice (David Niven) and his aging Calcutta Light Horse volunteers to coordinate a raid. Meanwhile, Stewart initiates a romance with the alluring widow Mrs. Agnes Cromwell (Barbara Kellerman).

What Works Well: Inspired by the actual events of Operation Creek (chronicled in James Leasor's 1978 novel Boarding Party), this is an old-fashioned World War Two adventure featuring clever allies outfoxing evil Nazis, with a bit of suave sleuthing and dangerous dalliance on the side. The on-location filming ensures plenty of organic local texture, and the climactic raid is decently engaging.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director Andrew V. McLaglen is caught between delivering a spy caper (leveraging Roger Moore's Bond charisma) or a throwback to World War Two movies from the 1950s and 1960s (reuniting Gregory Peck and David Niven). Unsurprisingly the movie falls into the yawning gap. Shallow characterizations and careless inattention to the hairstyles and wardrobes of the 1940s do not help, and the over-long duration succumbs to tedium well before the action finally starts.

Conclusion: These wolves are more bark than bite.



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Movie Review: Shout At The Devil (1976)

A sprawling Africa-set adventure, Shout At The Devil is an uneven mix of comedy, light-hearted adventure, romance, and deadly serious - and sometimes gory - war action.

The setting is Zanzibar in 1913. Gin-loving American adventurer and illegal tusk trader Flynn Patrick O'Flynn (Lee Marvin) is plotting his next illegal elephant hunt. In need of a British citizen to help navigate the patchwork of colonial territories in the region, he dupes traveling Englishman Sebastian Oldsmith (Roger Moore) into joining him. 

Flynn and Oldsmith quickly run afoul of German commander Fleischer (Rene Kolldehoff), who resents the intrusion into his fiefdom. A series of retaliatory raids ensue, and Fleischer calls upon the warship Blücher to ram and sink Flynn's dhow. Meanwhile, Oldsmith falls in love with Flynn's daughter Rosa (Barbara Parkins). When news arrives that the Great War has erupted in Europe, the confrontations with Fleischer take a deadly turn.

Shout At The Devil is a stellar half of a film. Once Flynn, Oldsmith, and Fleischer learn a real war has erupted in Europe, director Peter Hunt finally gains focus, secures a grip on the material, and orients the characters towards a purpose. The final hour is gritty, serious, and expertly filmed, and the actors are allowed to act rather than react. Highlights include a profound personal loss, an ambush of a military convoy, a hair-raising aerial reconnaissance flight, and then the plot's centrepiece consisting of a clear-eyed and deftly executed sabotage mission inspired by The African Queen.

The problem is that preceding all this good material is a fiasco of an opening half. The screenplay by Stanley Price and Alastair Reid, adapting the Wilbur Smith book, opts for a languid and prolonged introduction resembling a silly mash-up of The Man Who Would Be King and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Marvin and Moore ham it up only to be upstaged by Kolldehoff, the plot meanders aimlessly from place to place, and the attempts at humour are drawn from the bottom drawer labeled condescending slapstick.

It's difficult to imagine the same audience enjoying the two different halves, but the combined outcome of the split personality is a decent enough adventure, with an expansive scope and beautiful cinematography by Michael Reed. Lee Marvin is over-animated and constantly over-lubricated as a scrappy and resourceful rogue, while a reserved Roger Moore grows into the movie and provides a good counterbalance. 

At 147 minutes Shout At The Devil is a long and radically uneven journey, but at least the best is saved for last.



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Movie Review: Gold (1974)

A thriller set in the high-stakes mining industry, Gold is ambitious but uneven. 

The setting is South Africa, where an explosion at the Sonderditch gold mine results in multiple fatalities despite the best rescue efforts of underground manager Rod Slater (Roger Moore). The explosion was caused during an unsanctioned dig towards an underground dike ordered by the mine's director Manfred Steyner (Bradford Dillman), who is married to Terry (Susannah York), the granddaughter of the mine's owner Hurry Hirschfeld (Ray Milland).

Manfred is part of an evil international syndicate led by London-based gold investor Farrell (John Gielgud). By breaching the dike and flooding Sonderditch and adjacent mines, the syndicate aims to profit on the markets. The unsuspecting Slater is promoted to general manager, and also starts an affair with Terry. Manfred orders Slater and his crews to dig towards the dike, and potential disaster. 

With Roger Moore enjoying international fame after his first 007 outing, producer Michael Klinger assembles a Bond-like crew featuring director Peter Hunt, editor John Glen, production designer Syd Cain, and titles designer Maurice Binder. Gold is a not-bad adaptation of a Wilbur Smith book, the Stanley Price script not lacking in scope, characters, locations, and effort.

The film starts and ends strongly. The opening is literally a bang, the dangerous world of mining introduced through an explosion and breathless rescue operation. The climax is a similarly thrilling race to avert a complete catastrophe. In between, the narrative chugs along but the pace slows as the conspiracy unfolds and plenty of screen time is occupied by a rather tepid romance between Slater and Terry.

Mostly filmed in apartheid-era South Africa, Gold features plenty of travelogue material and sometimes cringey attempts to avoid the obvious. Only one character is overtly racist, and Black culture is represented through tribal dances and soccer matches. Black miner King (Simon Sabela) has a prominent and heroic role, but it's a whites-only affair at the cocktail parties and serious meetings.

John Gielgud's ruthless market manipulator and Bradford Dillman's slimy germophobe combine for a potent duo of antagonists lined up against Moore's unbuttoned-shirt heroics. The production values are adequate, and the film enjoys a reasonable layer of gloss. Gold may not bedazzle, but neither is it dull.



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Movie Review: Escape To Athena (1979)

A World War Two comedy thriller, Escape To Athena is lazy, hazy, and tonally uncoordinated.

It's 1944, and on an occupied Greek island Germany's Major Otto Hecht (Roger Moore) oversees an archeological dig. The forced labour is provided by assorted Allied prisoners of war including Professor Blake (David Niven), Sergeant Judson (Richard Roundtree), and Rotelli (Sonny Bono). Hecht is content sitting out the war and keeping some treasure for himself; Blake obliges by recycling the found artefacts to keep the dig going.

In a nearby village SS commander Major Volkmann (Anthony Valentine) is ruthlessly suppressing the population, while Zeno (Telly Savalas) is leading the local Greek resistance using the whorehouse run by Eleana (Claudia Cardinale) as his HQ. The arrival of talent show performers Charlie Dane (Elliott Gould) and Dottie Del Mar (Stefanie Powers) as new POWs at Hecht's camp adds a new dynamic. Charlie has his eyes on ancient treasure hidden at a local monastery, while Zeno is anticipating an allied invasion and has his orders to move against the occupying Germans.

Emitting the strong stench of a group vacation for underemployed Hollywood stars, Escape To Athena develops ugly blisters in the Greek sun. The Lew Grade production directed by George P. Cosmatos attempts to recreate the classic vibe of movies like The Guns Of Navarone but falls embarrassingly flat. While the setting, uniforms and vehicles hold promise, Cosmatos is never able to assemble them into anything other than settings, uniforms and vehicles waiting in vain for a breath of inspiration. Lame humour rubs against context-free action and plenty of explosions, but all momentum is lost in a stupefyingly bland opening hour.

As the parade of stars galavant across the screen, none are properly introduced or provided with anything resembling a backstory, creating an  emotional void that devours the film. And so the actors default to importing luggage from other projects. Roger Moore continues with the worst of his Bond womanizing mannerisms; Elliot Gould believes he is recreating MASH; Richard Roundtree has no idea what he is doing and gets maybe 10 words of dialogue; and Sonny Bono reads his lines off the nearest tree. Telly Savalas was not told this was a semi-comedy and plays the Greek resistance leader absolutely straight, adding to the tonal confusion.

The second half is marginally better and features three action set-pieces, slapped together but still decent: the mish mash of Allies first attack the German troops in the village; then destroy a submarine refueling depot; and finally assault a monastery high up in the mountains. And still Cosmatos' grip on the material is ghastly. At one point a group of unidentified underwater divers surface to join a battle, just because. Then for no apparent reason a massive intimidating rocket is rolled-out mid-battle complete with mirror-helmeted starship troopers in attendance. The rocket plays no meaningful role in the movie.

Of course the stuntmen do all the work, and all the explosions do not obscure Escape To Athena as a collection of random scenes cobbled together in the futile hope that the editors can create sense out of nonsense.

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Movie Review: ffolkes (1980)

A routine action flick, ffolkes (also known as North Sea Hijack and Assault Force) enjoys a stellar cast hampered by a wet noodle of a script.

In England, Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore) runs a private team of counter-terrorism operatives specializing in marine missions. He is asked by insurance giant Lloyd's of London to prepare contingency plans for a possible future threat against offshore oil platforms. Sure enough, a few months later a team of terrorists disguised as reporters gain access to the North Sea supply boat Esther, with Captain Olafsen (Jack Watson) and his crew forced to comply with orders from terrorist leader Lou Kramer (Anthony Perkins) and his goons.

Using Esther's supply mission as cover, Kramer's diving team surreptitiously place explosives first around drilling rig Ruth, then also around the much larger oil production platform Jennifer. Kramer demands a £25 million ransom. The British Prime Minister turns to Admiral Francis Brindsen (James Mason) to lead the counterstrike, and he reluctantly teams up with fflokes to deal with the threat.

After the relative success of The Wild Geese, ffolkes (an old English name spelled with two lower-case f's) followed as another British collaboration between director Andrew V. McLaglen and star Roger Moore, with a dash of American name recognition this time in the form of Anthony Perkins. With Moore just a bit past his prime as James Bond, ffolkes was also an attempt to tweak his image. Here he is an eccentric cat-loving, humourless and bearded misogynist, still equipped with the one-liners but delivered with a stern arrogance rather than a knowing wink.

While no action film is expected to be fully free of plot holes, the Jack Davies script is particularly inept. Some ransom fundamentals are utterly absent: Kramer never gives instructions as to how he wants the money delivered, nor does he reveal how he intends to make his getaway on the open seas. Kramer's background and motivation are similarly vacant. Perkins is left with nothing to do but sit on Esther's bridge with a singular expression (boredom?) hissing the same ultimatums.

Moore and Mason don't fare much better. A long and dull stretch features ffolkes and the hapless Brindsen doing nothing on board Jennifer, ffolkes literally knitting as they wait for the climax to arrive. The premise of the British government turning over the entire operation to a privateer and then allowing ffolkes to issue orders to the Prime Minister strains all credibility. Something about budget cuts is unconvincingly mumbled.

McLaglen does better in a short but moderately effective final assault, not everything going according to plan and ffolkes having to improvise on the fly to rescue the mission. Even then, contrived sloppiness is needed to manufacture cheap thrills.

ffolkes offers a reasonably intriguing premise, but does not capitalize.

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Movie Review: A View To A Kill (1985)

The fourteenth James Bond spy adventure and the seventh to feature Roger Moore, A View To Kill is a strong contender for the worst Bond movie of all time.

After recovering a microchip from a dead British agent in Siberia and escaping his Soviet pursuers, James Bond (Roger Moore) is asked to investigate the activities of industrialist Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). Working with Sir Godfrey Tibbett (Patrick Macnee) Bond uncovers a plot to illegally juice racing horses by implanting adrenaline-releasing devices in their legs.

Bond tangles with Zorin's assassin May Day (Grace Jones) and stumbles onto the mysterious Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) accepting a cheque for $5 million from Zorin. Much worse is to come: Zorin, who is revealed to be a KGB-created psychopath, has intentions to corner the global microchip market by triggering a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault to destroy Silicon Valley. Bond and Sutton team up to try and stop a series of underground explosions designed to kill thousands.

By far the best thing about the film is the Duran Duran tile song. Directed by John Glen, A View To A Kill is a slipshod, lethargic effort.  At 57 years old Moore is now decades beyond being convincing as a dashing spy involved in high-stakes physically-demanding battles, so the stuntmen again take centre stage. Moore is reduced to ludicrous close-ups, where he generally winces his way through trouble.

Much worse are the romantic interludes, now bordering on disgusting. Bond couples with British agent Kimberley Jones (actress Mary Stavin, 28 years old), KGB Agent Pola Ivanova (actress Fiona Fullerton, 29 years old), and Grace Jones as May Day (37 years old). The main girl and love interest is the unfortunately talentless Tanya Roberts (30 years old). The average discrepancy in age between Bond and his four sexual conquests is 26 years; Bond was comfortably old enough to be the father of all these women.

The plot may have partially saved the film, but by now the reservoir of ideas has run bone dry. About half the film is consumed with a story about microchips embedded in race horses; this turns out to be next to irrelevant. Zorin's plan to destroy Silicon valley is provided about one minute of exposition before the action moves to a nondescript mining site where explosives are being packed. Of course, there is a digital ticking clock.

The set piece locations include the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge, both boring in their familiarity. There is an endless slapstick chase scene on the streets of San Francisco, complete with a stupid sheriff, and a break-in at city hall says a lot about the lack of imagination: Bond reduced to rifling through dusty cabinets in the hell of municipal bureaucracy.

Roberts is saddled with perhaps the worst-written Bond girl role in the series. She is relegated to repeatedly hanging off edges and shrieking "JAMES!" for help, in a display of brain-dead scripting meeting the actress-as-decoration.

But the nadir is reached when a main character grabs a machine gun and mercilessly mows down hundreds of extras. A once-proud series based on wit, smarts, charm, exotic locations and genuine sexual magnetism - in short, the best of everything in the imaginary spy world - is reduced to an emotionless, featureless, perfunctory and derivative slaughterhouse.

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Movie Review: Octopussy (1983)

A tired paint-by-numbers entry in the Bond series, Octopussy rehashes familiar elements and delivers a tepid experience.

The death of Agent 009 in East Berlin and the sudden emergence of an ancient precious Fabergé egg trigger a new mission for James Bond (Roger Moore): find out who is suddenly cashing in on the sale of rare gems. At a London auction he quickly identifies exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) as a middle man in the international conspiracy, along with his beautiful assistant Magda (Kristina Wayborn) and vicious henchman Gobinda (Kabir Bedi).

Bond travels to India in pursuit of Khan, and uncovers a plot whereby Khan and local all-woman cult and circus leader Octopussy (Maud Adams) are enabling the sale of jewels to finance the private warmongering efforts of Soviet General Orlov (Steven Berkoff). It does not take long for Bond to seduce both Magda and Octopussy, but putting a stop to Orlov's plan will require a manic race against time.

Directed by John Glen (his second of five Bond efforts) and featuring the penultimate outing for Roger Moore, now 56 years old, in the role, Octopussy is the oh-so-familiar mix of dry quips, chases, gadgets, stunts and travel to locations that would have been exotic 20 years prior. With the stuntmen and second unit getting the lion's share of screen time, Moore mails in a lacklustre performance, unconvincing as an agent and less convincing as a lover. In the same year a rival, almost equally geriatric Bond in the form of Never Say Never Again was released, and neither set the world on fire.

The few good moments in Octopussy feature a Mercedes-on-rails chasing a train, while former real-life tennis star Vijay Amritraj shows up as an MI6 agent in India and uses a tennis racket to swat away some bad guys in yet another perfunctory chase. Kristina Wayborn and fellow Swede Maud Adams, both about 20 years younger than Moore, pretend to be interested and add decent doses of sensuality.

But otherwise this Bond goes through the motions almost in slow motion. India is condescendingly represented with wall-to-wall stereotypes of snake charmers and sword eaters. The villain Orlov is ineffective to the point of being dispatched early in the final reverse order elimination of bad guys. With both Magda and Octopussy at least partially rehabilitated from their evil ways after the sex-with-Bond treatment, Octopussy somehow designates the smarmy Kamal Khan, a middle man, as culprit-in-Chief.

The climactic race against a ticking bomb features Bond in a full-blown clown suit, and rarely has a film so perfectly captured the sad decline of a once dangerous secret agent.

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Movie Review: Moonraker (1979)

With Star Wars all the rage, James Bond gets his own space opera. Moonraker is extremely silly and immensely entertaining, one of the most over-the-top and bombastic entries in the series.

A Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked off the back of an RAF transport 747. Finishing a mission, James Bond (Roger Moore) survives a free-fall from an airplane and fends off an assassination attempt by Jaws (Richard Kiel), his foe from The Spy Who Loved Me. Bond is then assigned the task of finding out what happened to Moonraker. He visits the sprawling California compound of Drax Industries, the company that builds the shuttle, and meets the mysterious and extremely wealthy Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). Bond receives help from Drax's helicopter pilot Corinne (Corinne Clery), meets on-loan NASA scientist Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), and tangles with Drax's assassin, martial arts expert Chang (Toshiro Suga).

The trail leads to a glass manufacturing operation in Venice, where Bond uncovers a nerve gas, deadly to humans but harmless to animals, being packaged into vials and special spheres. He dispatches Chang and forms an uneasy alliance with Goodhead, revealed to be a CIA agent also investigating Drax. The next stop is Rio de Janeiro, where Jaws makes a reappearance, now working for Drax as a replacement for Chang. Finally Bond tracks down the plot deep into the Amazon jungle, where Drax has readied six Moonrakers to transport a group of perfect human beings to an orbiting space station, from where the nerve gas spheres will be dropped onto Earth, annihilating humanity.

Moonraker was rushed past the previously planned For Your Eyes Only to cash in on the surge in popularity of science fiction movies ignited by Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Pushing the successful formula of The Spy Who Love Me beyond the limit, Moonraker often errs on the side of campy humour, an attitude that risks diminishing the adventure to farcical levels. Even by Bond standards, the plot, a rehash of Spy but set in space rather under the ocean, does not survive any level of scrutiny.

But the film's weaknesses have more to do with too much Jaws, too many blatant product placements, and some extremely limp chase sequences. Two separate boat action sequences sink without a trace, a particularly insipid gondola chase in Venice is played for cheap laughs, while a motorboat chase in the Amazon is mind numbingly predictable. That Jaws finally changes sides and falls in love summarizes how hard Moonraker was trying to appeal to the inner child within the audience.

But Moonraker also offers up grand, big-budget fun. The opening free-fall battle for a parachute stunt is ridiculously audacious, and the fight between Bond and Chang in the Venetian glass showroom is a gem. Also clever is Bond outsmarting Drax's sniper with a hunting rifle. Bond gets to bed a succession of women, Corinne, Holly and Brazilian contact Manuela (Emily Bolton) all succumbing to his seduction, while the final I think he's attempting re-entry, sir double entendre is simply classic. Moore is in fine form, if just on the wrong side of the required physical fitness.

When the plot moves to space, scenes alternate between satisfying and clunky. The film preceded any actual space shuttle launches, and deserves high marks for reasonably accurately portraying what would become routine only several years later. The space travel special effects are good for the era, and Drax's space station is an impressive, fantastical creation. While the laser battle in space is botched into incoherence, Gilbert reliably delivers the requisite high energy climactic action within the space station.

Moonraker is breathless and sometimes out of breath, Bond's most inflated adventure with too much of everything, quantity overpowering quality but doing enough to maintain the momentum of the series into a new decade.

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The Movies Of Roger Moore

All movies starring Roger Moore and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Live And Let Die (1973)

Gold (1974)

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Shout At The Devil (1976)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Wild Geese (1978)

Escape To Athena (1979)

Moonraker (1979)

ffolkes (1980)

The Sea Wolves (1980)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Octopussy (1983)

A View To A Kill (1985)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

After almost expiring from low budget neglect, James Bond comes back to life with a bang: The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the best entries in the series, an engrossing spy thriller with a twinkle in the eye and no shortage of show stopping moments.

After escaping an assassination attempt by Soviet agents in the Austrian mountains, Bond (Roger Moore) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a British Polaris class submarine equipped with nuclear missiles. The initial clues lead to Egypt, where local criminals are hawking submarine tracking technology. Bond meets Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach), otherwise known as Agent Triple X of the KGB. She is on a similar mission for her country, a Soviet submarine having also gone missing. Bond also tangles with a steel-mouthed killer known as Jaws (Richard Kiel).

Eventually Bond and Anya team up, the British and Soviet governments agreeing to work together to find out who is stealing their subs and why. The trail leads to Sardinia, and then the off-shore base Atlantis, where the marine-obsessed megalomaniac Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens) is plotting the destruction of the world. Stromberg's supertanker Liparus is designed with a bow that opens up and swallows submarines, and Stromberg wants to use the sub's nuclear missiles to trigger a war of annihilation, allowing the oceans to again be the one source of new life. Bond and Anya need to find a way to stop Stromberg, but instead they find themselves his prisoners when an American sub is next to be captured.

Easily Moore's best outing as Bond, almost everything in The Spy Who Loved Me clicks together, in a satisfying arrangement not seen since Thunderball. The pre-credit sequence makes the strongest possible statement about the film's intent. The legendary - and insane - ski jump off a sheer cliff boldly announcing that Bond was done with the low budget cheese. This is a movie seeking serious, and stunning, action.

Of course, not everything is absolutely perfect with the film. The streets and nightclubs of Egypt are surprisingly sparsely populated, the budget apparently not affording a convincing number of extras, and no explanation is provided as to why Stromberg needed that third submarine. And once Anya teams up with Bond, she does seem to lose most of her edge, becoming too often the exclamatory decoration at the end of his arm.

But these are quibbles. The Spy Who Loved Me delivers superlative entertainment. Carly Simon's evocative theme song, Nobody Does It Better, sets the stage by breaking with tradition as the first Bond song to not carry the name of the film, and it plays against one of Maurice Binder's most daring opening silhouette sequences, filled with gun-loaded playful sexiness.

The story is coherent, the basic elements borrowed from You Only Live Twice but with the overall narrative dramatically improved. Bond tracks down a succession of middle men in scenic Egypt to identify Stromberg as the villain of the piece, and Curt Jurgens creates a menacing mastermind, refreshingly not looking for any sort of ransom or pay-off. He just wants to reset humanity and start again from where it all began, the depth of the oceans. Meanwhile, Jaws quickly establishes himself as one of the series' most intimidating and lovable henchmen, and director Lewis Gilbert does not hesitate to colour the screen with blood when needed to demonstrate Jaws' ability to kill.

Central to the success of The Spy Who Loved Me is Agent Triple X, and for the first time Bond is provided with a partner for an elongated part of his adventure. The competitive rivalry between Bond and Anya, particularly in the early scenes, adds plenty of spice to the film, Bond meeting his opposite number in a sustained encounter of equals. Barbara Bach was never going to win any acting awards, but she looks stunning in what turned out to be the one significant role of her life.

The showcase gadget is the Lotus Esprit, a tricked-out hybrid car / submarine that immediately enters the hall-of-fame of Bond toys. Gilbert also gets the timing of the chase scenes exactly right: short, sharp, and varied. None of the pursuits, whether on land or in the water, outstay their welcome.

The Spy Who Loved Me boasts two stunning sets, the inside of the supertanker Liparus, and Stromberg's base at Atlantis. The cavernous Liparus set features room enough for three abducted submarines, and hosts a grand battle for control between Stromberg's men and the submarine crew members led by Bond. Atlantis is the first bulbous, organic-shaped lair in the Bond series, an intimidating mechanical creature ready to dominate a destroyed earth.

The Spy Who Loved Me marks the revival of filmdom's most famous secret agent, and just as Anya falls in love with Bond, in this form so does the rest of the world.

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Movie Review: The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond series hits an almost fatal low-point. The Man With The Golden Gun is a witless adventure for Agent 007, the movie hampered by a limp plot and littered with low-grade and sometimes dumbfounding attempts at humour.

Bond (Roger Moore) receives a death threat in the form of a golden bullet etched with "007". International gun-for-hire Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is known to use golden bullets, and after Bond is relieved of an assignment to investigate a solar energy industrialist, he tracks down Scaramanga through a belly dancer in Beirut and a specialty weapons manufacturer in Macau. The trail leads to Scaramanga's mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) in Hong Kong, promptly seduced by Bond much to the disappointment of local agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), a witless dumb blond.

Bond uncovers a link between Scaramanga and Hai Fat, a Thai master criminal seeking control of a "solex agitator", a device that regulates solar power production. Hai Fat captures Bond, but he makes his escape with the help of local contact Lieutenant Hip (Soon-Tek Oh), despite the noisy reappearance of Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James). Scaramanga and his dwarf assistant Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) turn the tables on all their enemies and make an escape to a secluded small island base off the coast of China, where Scaramanga is converting solar power into marketable energy as well as ray gun weaponry. Bond has to infiltrate the island and thwart the plans of the master assassin.

Almost everything in The Man With The Golden Gun misses the target. The plot is a messy byproduct of mashing the energy crisis of the early 1970s with the martial arts movie craze brought about by the Bruce Lee-inspired era. The grand evil plan is so unconvincing that the main villain himself has no interest in understanding it, the big reveal consisting of Bond rattling on about solar technology while Scaramanga dismissively admits that he cares for none of it.

And the missteps continue. Britt Ekland ensures that Mary Goodnight looks great in a bikini, but Goodnight is the dumbest woman ever labelled as an agent in any movie, Bond or otherwise. Two giggly teenaged girls help Bond to escape from Hai Fat by defeating dozens of male student at a martial arts school. The title song by Lulu is easily among the worst in the series. And someone actually thought that bringing Sheriff J.W. Pepper back for another round of redneck humour after Live And Let Die was a good idea.

And the one great moment in the film, an incredible flying car stunt featuring full rotation along the longitudinal axis, is incomprehensibly ruined. Director Guy Hamilton, mercifully helming his final Bond adventure, conspires with composer John Barry and producer Albert Broccoli to insert a comic slide whistle sound to accompany the stunt, degrading a dramatic technical achievement to the level of a cheap vaudevillian joke.

The few good elements revolve around the character of Scaramanga, Christopher Lee bringing to life a world-weary killer who believes that there is little difference between his career and that of Bond. There are flickers of a better movie in the brief encounters between the two men, but these are trounced by the shoe-horned solar energy nonsense and a tired funhouse final confrontation.

The poor commercial performance of The Man With The Golden Gun marked the end of the era of relatively cheap Bond adventures designed to cash in on the name with minimal effort. The trio of Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun represent a creative trough that could have meant the end of 007. Fortunately Moore and Broccoli would persevere and regroup, steering the series towards a big-budget comeback three years later.

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Movie Review: Live And Let Die (1973)

Roger Moore steps into the James Bond role, just as the blaxploitation film era hits its peak. Live And Let Die makes good use of a relatively local drug trafficking plot, but also suffers from seriously dated stereotypes and ill-advised attempts at boarish humour.

Three British agents are killed, one at the United Nations, one in New Orleans, and the third on the voodoo and snake-obsessed small (and fictional) Caribbean island of San Monique. Agent James Bond (Moore) travels to New York to investigate, and is immediately the target of an assassination attempt. With the help of the CIA's Felix Leiter (David Hedison), Bond tracks down the would-be murderers to a Harlem restaurant, where he tangles with a group of drug traffickers working for gang leader Mr. Big. Beguiling tarot card reader Solitaire (Jane Seymour) appears to be the group's resident muse.

Bond next travels to San Monique, ruled by the corrupt Prime Minister Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto). The CIA's poorly trained Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry) attempts to provide some assistance, but boat owner Quarrel Jr. (Roy Stewart) proves to be a more effective ally. Bond infiltrates Kananga's secluded estate and seduces Solitaire, causing her to lose her fortune-telling powers. Bond uncovers vast poppy fields and a major heroine trafficking plot linking Dr. Kananga with Mr. Big. With the help of his henchmen, including the claw-handed Tee Hee Johnson (Julius Harris) and barrel-shaped, gravel-voiced Whisper (Earl Jolly Brown), Kananga strikes back and seeks his revenge on both Bond and Solitaire.

Live And Let Die has many moments that die a slow death. A boat chase in the Louisiana bayous takes forever, and is made much longer with the ill-conceived introduction of the idiot redneck Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James), inserted for comic relief but only providing relief when he finally exits the movie, having massively overstayed his welcome. Rosie Carver is one of the least interesting ladies ever to interact with Bond, while the blaxploitation elements, including criminalizing almost every black character and whites continuously referring to blacks as "boy", have aged quite poorly.

But the Tom Mankiewicz script also gets a lot right. The funeral procession in New Orleans is pure unnerving fun, and deserves the encore that it receives. The character of Solitaire and Jane Seymour's portrayal of the sexy but sad fortune teller are memorable, and the scenes in New York have that 1970's edgy but derelict vibe.

The generally small scale of the conspiracy tackled by Bond is welcome, as he gets down to sorting out vile drug barons rather than world-control maniacs. Yaphet Kotto portrays one of the less exaggerated Bond villains, which makes him both more authentically dangerous but also more forgettable in the context of the series. And finally there are the crocodiles, as Bond comes face to face with the gigantic and hungry reptiles, and finds a clever way to escape their toothy smiles.

Moore, already 46 years old as he makes his debut, is fit-enough and certainly suave, but lacks any dangerous edges. His style is smooth and effortless, quick with the quip and the raised eyebrow, and conveying a man enjoying himself rather than fighting for any cause. Guy Hamilton, directing his third Bond feature, settles into a functional rather than flashy mode. This is a Bond adventure with little glitz or glamour, but plenty of haphazard voodoo idols, masks, snakes and touches of the occult.

The title song by Paul McCartney and Wings is another strong entry into the Bond soundtrack catalogue, and the theme is effectively used throughout the film.

While it does not take the series in any new or exciting directions, Live And Let Die serves the purpose of surviving the transition to a new Bond actor. Bond lives on, with an intact license to let others die.

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