Friday Night at the Movies X

For some reason yesterday I was in the mood for a James Bond movie. I wanted Thunderball, but Netflix didn't have it. So we watched The Man With The Golden Gun. You know one Bond movie is pretty much like any other. Good-lookin' half dressed women, car chases and stunts, and a super villain Bond needs to kill to make the world safe for humanity or democracy or some other noble goal.

 It is a good Friday Night Movie. It does do a little preaching about running out of oil, but it was filmed and released in 1974, right at the height of the OPEC oil embargo caused energy crisis, so I guess a little preaching isn't to bad, especially since the premise of the movie is for Bond to retrieve a stolen device that would allow the efficient harvesting of solar energy.

The car chase is great, including the scene where Bond flips a car 360 degrees laterally while jumping a river to get at the bad guy. The funny part was the Bad Guy was driving a 1974 AMC Matador, while Bond was driving an AMC Hornet, and the cops were driving AMC Sedans.

In Hong Kong no less. I never realized AMC was such a popular brand in the Far East.

And of course at some point Bond has to get captured by the evil doers, who, instead of a quick bullet to the head and dump the body in the ocean process, decide to have a school of martial artists kill Bond. I guess it was graduation test maybe? Anyway, as usual, Bond takes a few knocks and then manages to escape the evil clutches, it this case with the help of a couple of teenage martial artists, who just happen to be girls, who manage to defeat 30 or so members of the dojo. The evil doers apparently are having trouble finding good help.

The final showdown is not as thrilling as some, but still fun to watch as the bad guy gets his. and then of course Bond rescues the device and the girl and escapes on a just happens to be handy Chinese Junk.

Its not the best of the Bond films- in fact most reviews call it the worst of the series because of the comedy that had been inserted- but hey, a bad Bond film is till better than 90% of the other junk out there.

And I liked the comedy aspect. I've said many times I watch movies to be entertained, and The Man With The Golden Gun does just that. Fast paced, it never drags, and jumps from one piece of excitement to another without time to fetch a beer.

I also found a couple of other Bond films on Netflix, so I may have a few more James Bond nights at the movies. But I doubt I'll write reviews, unless I see one that lacks good-lookin' half dressed women, car chases and stunts, and a super villain Bond needs to kill to make the world safe for humanity or democracy or some other noble goal.