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The Man With The Golden Gun (Special Edition)

The Man With The Golden Gun (Special Edition)

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "Mabelle, we're Democrats!"
Review: "The Man With the Golden Gun" is the unlikely title to appear in the new 7-disc James Bond DVD collection. It's reputation among Bond fans is on the lower end of the scale, although the movie has a lot to recommend it. The DVD production is weaker, content-wise, than the first two movies in the box set ("Dr. No" and "Goldfinger").

The film's twin highlights are Christopher Lee as the chilling title villain and Herve Villechaize as his proto-Tattoo sidekick. Lee is sibilant and menacing as million-dollar assassin Scaramanga, although his character is let down by the bizarre solar-energy ransom scheme he inherits in the movie's second half. Villechaize becomes the only Bond-film henchman to both cook a Cordon-Bleu dinner and kick Bond in the kneecaps.

Among the downsides are Britt Ekland (whose autobiography was titled "True Britt"), the absolute nadir among Bond Girls. That said, she was cast on the basis of her bikini alone, which makes the movie's final 15 minutes enjoyable on a pure male eye-candy level. The movie's plot is disjointed, as the Far East locales, "Solex Agitator" scenario, and Clifton James' encore appearance as Louisiana sheriff J.W. Pepper, do not remotely form a cohesive script when thrown together. When Pepper's wife buys a statue of an elephant in Thailand (why a redneck cop vacations in Bangkok is never explained), Pepper delivers the line most baffling to non-U.S. audiences: "Mabelle, we're Democrats!". There were no other Republicans in this film.

The DVD extras' most exciting revelation is that director Guy Hamilton was forced to switch cinematographers halfway through production. The making-of documentary, again narrated by Patrick MacNee, is strictly perfunctory, although the second documentary, a quick tour of Bond-film stuntmen, is worth your 30 minutes. The commentary track is another cut-and-paste job, featuring the third host narrator in the new box set's first three discs. You'll hear from Christopher Lee, but not until the very end, and before that are many incomprehensible anecdotes from the production crew. There are no missing or deleted scenes, although a snippet from an extended Bond-Scaramanga confrontation does appear in the first theatrical trailer.

Also not alluded to on disc is the Alice Cooper rendition of the theme song, commissioned but never used. John Barry makes excellent use of the Lulu title track within his score (the musical motif is recycled as both Dixieland jazz and honkytonk piano in the excellent pre-titles sequence), but he also appears on disc to apologize for the pennywhistle sound effect that's had Bond fans gnashing their teeth for the past 28 years.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
Review: This film is not one of the best of the Bond films. It scores points because of the villian Scarmanga and his small henchman. It has great locations and great fight scences. I love the duel between Bond and Scarmanga. This is a pretty good Bond film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "My golden gun against your walther PPK."
Review: The second film of agent Roger Moore as 007 features one of the most magnetic and oustanding villians ever! Fransisco Scaramanga is The Man with the Golden Gun and is puts up a riviting duel between him and Bond! A hitman that has 3 nipples and a penchant for carrying a gun that uses golden bullets. the henchman is Nick Nack- a lethal midget that controls the funhouse and aids Scaramanga in his deadly ways. The Bond girls are Andrea Anders and Miss Goodnight. They really don't help 007 too much, but hey they are good-looking. the best scene is the 360 degree car flip and the final duel. the title songs vocalist is Lulu and this is the last film to be directed by Guy Hamilton. All in all a spectactular 007 film that is full of girls, gadgets and a fantastic villian. Don't miss it!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Yes, there is a defect, but....
Review: As many of you know, the DVD is defective starting at Chapter 21, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy this DVD.

What the defect appears to be is simply bad encoding: the colors scramble, the audio becomes skippy and garbled.

PS2 can recover from the defect with nothing more than a slight hesitation where the defect first occurs. My DVD-ROM on my computer recovered from the defect after about 1 minute of play time, but my stand-alone DVD player never recovered, leaving the rest of the movie messed-up and totally worthless.

I hope this will help someone who wants the movie but has heard about the defect. It really depends on the ability of your DVD player/software as to how bad the defect will come across.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Don't listen to people who trash this movie !
Review: ... This is a truly excellent 007 flick. The locations are terrific and so are Christophher Lee and that Tatoo guy as the villains. This movie also has one of the best Bond girls in Britt Ekland as Miss Goodnight, she in a bikini sure made an impression on me the first time I saw this movie at 12 years old !

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: still defective
Review: don't get excited about the re-release of MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. the DVD is STILL defective! the old copy quits around chapter 21, so you can't watch the end of the movie. i tried about 10 copies on several different dvd players and NONE worked. sadly, the re-issue has the same flaw. how shoddy. skip it. save your money.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Bond with one lousy part
Review: This is a great Bond movie. You could tell it was written for Connery, right before his departure from the series. It's very suspenseful, and has a great premise, and a great villain in Christopher Lee. However, about an hour an a half into the movie, there's one glaring fault that always bothers me: as Bond jumps his car over a river in an amazing stunt during a chase sequence, the filmmakers added the sound effect of a child's whislte; the whistle is the first note in the dumbing-down of Bond we suffered in the 70s. It announces to us the series is about to get very silly. Had Connery been in this one, it would have been one of the best of the entire series.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Solid entry in film series short on suspense
Review: Although far from the best in the Bond series, Golden Gun has a number of set pieces that make it worthwhile. Although the films were always written with an eye towards the amazing stunt sequences, Golden Gun is probably one of the earliest that sacrifices the story to the stunt. Sure, that's also true of Connery's last forey for the Bond team (Diamonds Are Forever was one of the first Bond film that relied as much on camp and stunts as story and suspense), but given the weakness of the material it's more noticable here.

Kudos to the Bond team for finally getting around to casting Christopher Lee (the novel of Dr. No was written with him in mind for the title character by Lee's cousin by marriage Ian Fleming)in a Bond film. He manages to light up many of the dull scenes he is in. I personally prefer Live and Let Die to Golden Gun. Since it was the last Bond film written originally with Connery in mind, it has more in common with the strength of the Connery series.

Moore does a very good job here but his take on Bond isn't fully formed yet and the writers clearly haven't found a way to mold the script to his unique interpretation. The Moore Bond films would improve with time (although there were a fair amount of clunkers in the mix as well).

The DVD looks fine although there were some noticable analog artifacts in the soundtrack (no surprise). Nevertheless, the transfer is quite good and the sound very good as well.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: "My Golden Gun Against Your Walther PPK"
Review: So says Francisco Scaramanga, a classy assassin with a bizarre physical feature who resides in Southeast Asia and who earns $1 million per hit. Thus does James Bond meet his match in the underworld.

Roger Moore's second outing as James Bond is the last of the Guy Hamilton-directed Bonds, and Moore's growth into the character really shows here in one of the more underrated Bond films. While a little short on action compared to future Bond epics and such past adventures as Diamonds Are Forever, Golden Gun makes up for it in some unusually effective character interplay, particularly in Christopher Lee's Francisco Scaramanga - it should serve as no surprise that the future Count Dooku of Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones would figure prominently in a Bond film, as Lee was close to Ian Fleming and nearly won the part of Doctor No.

Both Bond and Scaramanga are after a Solex, a device that allows the conversion of solar light into energy, and Scaramanga's professional tic is his use of unusual caliber guns, including his gold-gestated signature sidearm. Scaramanga is also a fancier of psychological torture, trapping potential victims in a nightmarish maze of lights, wild west sets, and mirrors within in palatial estate - as a syndicate member finds out before being shot down in the film's prologue. But among Scaramanga's trophies is a lifelife mockup of James Bond himself - so lifelike, in fact, that it winds up altering the course of the chase.

Scaramanga also has his own odd-ball sidekick - Nick Nack, who runs the "game" room and eggs James on to get Scaramanga - so he will inherit the assassin's wealth.

There are two action set pieces that really stand out - James gets shanghaied into a martial arts school (presumably influenced by Bruce Lee's film Enter The Dragon) in Thailand, and has to fight his way out and then drive a motorboat through the nearby rivers, and then James pursues Scaramanga and Nick Nack in American Motors vehicles through the city and the countryside - marred by the inappropriate presence of the bumbling Southern sheriff from Live And Let Die. Also weakening the film is Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), who is given too little to do and not allowed to be more than a somewhat dim sidekick.

Despite such weaknesses, Golden Gun has aged well as an underrated clash of characters in the Bond series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another awesome Bond movie!
Review: The Man with the golden gun is an all around great movie! Roger Moore and Christopher Lee were amazing together. Lee made the perfect villian. The whole plot was good. During the movie I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was directed perfectly and it was well casted. It is my personal favorite Bond movie of all time!


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