--- title: "The Man with the Golden Gun" year: 1974 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-man-with-the-golden-gun" fi1m_score: 56 critics_score: 46 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-18T11:23:05.458103+00:00" updated: "2026-09-18T11:23:16.168134+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) Directed by Guy Hamilton · 2h 05m · MPA PG · Adventure, Action, Thriller **Fi1m score: 56** · Critics 46 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* The best villain of the Moore years, and he spends most of the film waiting for the plot to find him > Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga is the most elegant killer the series has produced, and the film around him is a tired one, padded with slide whistles and a sheriff on holiday. Worth it for the villain; not enough else to recommend an evening. ## Synopsis A golden bullet engraved with the number 007 arrives at MI6, and M (Bernard Lee) takes it as a warning: Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), a hired killer who charges a million dollars a shot and uses a gold pistol, has been paid to kill James Bond (Roger Moore). M pulls Bond off the hunt for a missing solar-energy device, the Solex Agitator, and sends him after the assassin nobody has ever seen. The trail runs from a belly dancer’s dressing room in Beirut to a gunsmith called Lazar (Marne Maitland) in Macau, then to Hong Kong, where Bond follows Scaramanga’s mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) and picks up Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), a Secret Service colleague who fancies him. Scaramanga’s diminutive manservant Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) is watching. ## Review *The Man with the Golden Gun* is Roger Moore’s second outing as James Bond, and its premise is simple: one professional killer is hired to shoot another. Tom Mankiewicz and Richard Maibaum take the name and the gun from Ian Fleming’s novel and little else, and bolt on a solar-energy device called the Solex Agitator that everyone wants because it is 1974 and petrol is short. Guy Hamilton, who directed [*Goldfinger*](https://film.one/film/goldfinger), is back for his fourth Bond. It runs 125 minutes, and a good half hour of that is the film looking for something to do. Christopher Lee is the reason it is remembered. His Scaramanga is tall, courteous and unhurried, a man who charges a million dollars a shot and regards this as reasonable. The film introduces him in the pre-title sequence, letting a hired thug (Marc Lawrence) loose in a private funhouse and stalking him through mirrors, wax gangsters and a swinging saloon door while Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) commentates. Peter Murton’s funhouse set is cheaply built and deliberately wrong, all slanted floors and dead-eyed mannequins, and we were unnerved by it for longer than a PG has any right to manage. Lee never raises his voice. Moore is less well served. The film cannot decide what kind of Bond he is, so it asks him to be two: the light comedian who is particular about his drinks, and a thug who twists a woman’s arm in a Hong Kong hotel room and threatens to break it. He plays the rough scenes as if someone off camera had told him to, and Maud Adams is the one who comes out of them with dignity. Her Andrea Anders is the only person in the film who seems to have thought about what living with Scaramanga would be like, and she is not on screen nearly enough. The locations are well used, and Oswald Morris and Ted Moore shoot them without fuss. Hong Kong harbour at dusk is done in long lenses that make the junks look like moths, and Murton’s best idea is MI6’s local headquarters inside the half-sunk hull of the liner *Queen Elizabeth*, every desk and filing cabinet propped level on a floor that tilts. Bernard Lee’s M sits in there looking as though the angle offends him personally. The film gives it about four minutes. Then there is the bridge. During a chase through Bangkok, Bond’s car takes off from one half of a broken bridge over a canal, turns a full corkscrew in the air and lands on the other half, and it is plainly done in one piece by a real car and a real driver. We sat forward and stopped breathing for a second, which is what a stunt is for. Then John Barry’s soundtrack puts a slide whistle over it. Whoever made that decision turned the best moment in the film into a cartoon. The rest of the comedy is worse. Clifton James’s Sheriff J.W. Pepper, the bellowing lawman from *Live and Let Die*, is on holiday in Thailand and ends up in the passenger seat for the chase, shouting. He gets more screen time than the villain’s mistress. Britt Ekland’s Mary Goodnight is a Secret Service officer written as a fool, and Ekland does what she can, which is to look pretty and bewildered on cue. Barry’s score is thinner than usual, and Lulu’s title song spends three minutes finding rhymes for ‘gun’. Raymond Poulton and John Shirley cut it all at a pace that keeps stopping for a joke. Hamilton knew, on *Goldfinger*, that a Bond film is a run of rooms that each have a purpose. Here the Solex drops out of the story for long stretches, a karate school appears because somebody had seen *Enter the Dragon*, and Bond and Scaramanga, who are meant to be circling one another, share too few scenes. When they do meet the film comes alive, and the second half takes them somewhere we will not describe. Most critics sit where we do, admiring Lee and not much else, and we see no reason to argue with them. If you want to watch one of the great screen villains do a job of work, this is a good evening. If you want a good Bond film, there are better ones on either side of it. *Fi1m score 56, published 18 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews lean negative, and almost every one of them agrees on the same thing: Christopher Lee. His Scaramanga is praised across the board as suave, aloof and the film’s chief pleasure, with several critics calling him its only saving grace. The car jump across the broken bridge is singled out as one of the series’ great stunts, and the locations get a word of approval. Beyond that, praise is thin. The reservations cluster on the script and on Roger Moore, whom several critics find bland next to Connery, and on comedy that lands as fumbled or overdone. The spread is wide. Empire and Total Film both rate it a solid entertainment, Total Film admiring John Barry’s uneasy score where Eye for Film hears a weak one; Britt Ekland is funny to Radio Times and dim to Eye for Film. Den of Geek is harshest, calling the plot shambolic and the premise wasted. ### Reviews we read (9) - **Empire**, Ian Freer (70/100, inferred): The film delivers an entertaining 007 adventure that fits tonally with the Connery era, with strong action sequences and a memorably quirky villain in Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga. It suffers from an overemphasis on knockabout comedy and underdeveloped female characters. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/man-golden-gun-review/) - **Total Film**, Nick Setchfield (70/100, inferred): The movie has a uniquely queasy, macabre atmosphere with surreal set-pieces and an uneasy John Barry score that makes Bond’s world feel dangerously strange. It also features one of the franchise’s great stunt sequences in the car jump across the broken bridge. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/bond-50-the-man-with-the-golden-gun/) - **Radio Times**, Adrian Turner (3/5): The critic notes it improves on the novel, with fine villain Christopher Lee and funny Britt Ekland, but criticizes repeated climax scene and return of a character from previous film, while praising the location. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-gp7rza/the-man-with-the-golden-gun/) - **The New York Times** (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film characterized by poverty of invention and excitement, with Roger Moore lacking Sean Connery's impudence and the script delivering dull chases and routine explosions. Christopher Lee and Herve Villechaize provide the only energetic moments with their sinister vitality. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/19/archives/film-james-bond-and-energy-crisisman-with-golden-gun-at-several-the.html) - **Time Out**, VG (30/100, inferred): The critic finds it formulaic and lacking style, with a banal script and bland Bond performance from Roger Moore, but praises Christopher Lee's suave villainy as Scaramanga. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-1) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): The review notes the screenwriters aimed for more maturity and fewer gadgets but delivered comparatively spare mechanical devices and fumbled humor. The story diverts Bond to hunt a hit man using gold bullets, with Bond predictably conquering obstacles and ending with time for one of the Bond girls. [Read](https://variety.com/1973/film/reviews/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-1200423145/) - **Eye for Film**, Jennie Kermode (50/100, inferred): The film is deeply uneven and unsure of itself with a weak score, dim Bond girl, silly lyrics and comedy missteps, but features impressive cinematography and Christopher Lee’s magnificent, aloof performance as Scaramanga. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-1974-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) - **Film Stories**, Mark Harrison (50/100, inferred): Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga is the standout saving grace of this kitschy, frazzled Roger Moore Bond adventure weakened by production turmoil and silly elements. The piece emphasizes the strong villain performance amid middling franchise quality. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/features/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-a-james-bond-film-as-good-as-its-villain/) - **Den of Geek**, Max Williams (20/100, inferred): The critic deems the film lousy, criticizing its shambolic plot and wasted potential despite a brilliant premise. They single out Christopher Lee's compelling performance as the villain Scaramanga for praise. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-great-villain-lousy-bond-movie/) ## Details - **Director:** Guy Hamilton - **Director:** Guy Hamilton - **Screenplay:** Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz - **Novel:** Ian Fleming - **Cinematography:** Ted Moore, Oswald Morris - **Editor:** Raymond Poulton, John Shirley - **Music:** John Barry - **Production design:** Peter Murton - **Producer:** Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, Charles Orme - **Cast:** Roger Moore as James Bond; Christopher Lee as Francisco Scaramanga; Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight; Maud Adams as Andrea Anders; Hervé Villechaize as Nick Nack; Clifton James as Sheriff J.W. Pepper; Richard Loo as Hai Fat; Soon-Tek Oh as Lieutenant Hip - **Runtime:** 2h 05m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 20 December 1974 - **Genres:** Adventure, Action, Thriller - **Budget:** $7 million - **Box office:** $98 million ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-18.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Wicker Man* (1973), Fi1m 90: Lee again, as another courteous man of leisure who is not what he seems — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-wicker-man.md) - *From Russia with Love* (1963), Fi1m 84: The series doing a professional assassin properly, with Robert Shaw and a train — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/from-russia-with-love.md) - *Le Samouraï* (1967): Alain Delon as a hired killer with Scaramanga’s stillness and none of the props - *Enter the Dragon* (1973): The Hong Kong action film this one was imitating, done by people who could - *The Day of the Jackal* (1973), Fi1m 84: An assassin’s job of work followed step by step, with almost no jokes — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-day-of-the-jackal.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. 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