8. The Man With The Golden Gun: Strong-Arm Tactics
The Man with the Golden Gun is one of the more frustrating Bond films because it has the kernel of a very good idea. Bond learns that he is being targeted for assassination by Scaramanga, the world's greatest hitman. Because nobody knows what Scaramanga looks like, Bond has to find him before one of his golden bullets finds Bond. The film-makers set up a 'duel between titans', but squander this tension with a meandering, aimless screenplay. The consequence of this parodic tone is that any moment with a trace of grit, danger or drama feels like an exile from an altogether better movie. The finished product has a certain self-amused quality to it, culminating in the absurd scene of Bond trapping a midget in a suitcase. Take the scene in question. Bond has located Scaramanga's mistress, Andrea Anders, at a hotel in Hong Kong. He sneaks into her room and 'surprises' her in the shower. Anders is reluctant to talk, but Bond forces the information he needs out of her by twisting her arm behind her back and threatening worse ("I'll break it if you don't tell me where those bullets go."). There's always a certain awkwardness in these early Bond films when 007 physically threatens women- it's rarely justified in terms of the overall narrative. I can easily imagine a version of this film were Bond, driven to the limits of his abilities and in fear of his life, feels that he has to strong-arm Anders to get his way- but this isn't the film we're talking about. The film we're talking about ends with Bond trapping a midget in a suitcase. It doesn't help that Roger Moore makes for a pretty unconvincing brute. The film-makers were still following the Sean Connery model and hadn't yet realised that Moore's own strength- light comedy- could carry a movie. Strange as it may sound, The Man with the Golden Gun might have been better (or at least less tonally embarrassing) if they had shaved away the rough edges and played the comedy angle more completely. You can only have it both ways if you're a creative genius, which no-one on this production was, and so the scene comes across as nothing more than a cheap bit of gratuitous misogyny in a movie that ends, lest we forget, with Bond trapping a midget in a suitcase.