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.