3497. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Starring: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland

Director: Guy Hamilton

Running Time: 125 mins

The Man With The Golden Gun is a British film following James Bond on his mission to capture an important piece of solar technology from a legendary assassin named Scaramanga, famed for his golden gun.

Action, worldwide locations, car chases, stunts, gadgets and innuendos – The Man With The Golden Gun is James Bond at its very best. An immensely entertaining blockbuster from start to finish, this film is full of everything that makes 007 great, with leads Roger Moore, Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland among others putting in sterling performances throughout.

I had an absolute whale of a time with The Man With The Golden Gun, the film that perhaps integrates the lighter and more serious sides of Bond better than any other. Matching the likes of Dr. No and Goldfinger for its iconic scenes, characters and lines, there’s never a dull moment here.

The story here is the ultimate Bond playbook, with Christopher Lee starring brilliantly as the villainous Scaramanga, more than a match for Roger Moore’s effortlessly charismatic Bond.

There’s nothing too outrageous about the plot here (or not at least compared to Moonraker), but The Man With The Golden Gun is a movie that’s also not afraid to have fun with the laws of reality, doing so in an enormously enjoyable way throughout.

While the film does a brilliant job at crafting a simple yet entertainingly intricate mission for you to follow James Bond on, the biggest charm of The Man With The Golden Gun comes in its action and humour.

With epic, ambitious action sequences that feature some iconic stunts, enthralling car chases, tense shootouts and more, this is probably the most exciting Bond movie from the Roger Moore era, but it’s also one that enjoys a laugh amidst all the thrills and spills.

Though not as campy and frivolous as some of the later Moore-era Bonds, The Man With The Golden Gun is delightfully full of innuendos, fun side characters and sharp one-liners that only bolster the film’s fun factor, putting it on a level with some of the best from the Sean Connery years.

Looking back decades later, you might think The Man With The Golden Gun is a little generic, perhaps too full of Bond clichés to be worth your time. But believe me, there are few spy movies out there which pull off all those clichés in such an entertaining way, and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed with this enormously lovable blockbuster. So, that’s why I’m giving The Man With The Golden Gun an 8.0 overall.