My third Bond film and the first I ever owned. People should always give children the gift of Tom Mankewicz, pissy Roger Moore, tri-nippled Christopher Lee and the world's premiere personal chef to children for Christmas.
TMWTGG gets a raw deal, and for years it was the Bond that people gave hell despite never seeing it. It is a low in terms of budget and production, plus it was made at the height of Saltzman's money troubles in addition to the Broccoli-Saltzman partnership fraying. Then add on that it was based on Fleming's novel which itself was unfinished, chose to add elements of popular kung-fu entertainment which itself was exploitative, was not extravagantly budgeted, had waning audience interest, and a general degree of low key emphasis that results in some bland moments and a number of far too silly gags that do not really work.
But what is present is one of the best villains ever onscreen in Lee's most charming performance. You don't want him to fail actually. Why can't Scaramanga and Nick Nack live in affluent peace? Roger does quite well in a very tough and gruff performance that makes the mistake of trying to mimic some Connery moments but proves that Roger could be just as nasty if required. The Mankewiczian wit is so on point that it may be the best of the three in terms of dialogue gags. Just incredible, right down to the Phuyuck bottle.
I've always loved how the film has a golden cast to the cinematography and the it was both the last shot flat spherical and the last by Ted Moore.
The locale is exotic, Bond has a nasty edge, the villain is grand...but the plot doesn't shape up to match the strength of the setup, and what could be extremely suspenseful just peters out into harebrained mediocrity that has some explosions at the end. The fun becomes more in the ridiculousness of the journey and less the plot. And Britt Ekland is just hopelessly miscast. Why they had to make Goodnight so much of a dumb bimbo and Maud Adams a cardboard cutout is beyond me.
Hip should have been the sacrificial lamb and the ending sequence between titans should not have been so cut down as it was, because ti creates a huge lapse in the narrative payoff.