The Man With The Golden Gun proved to be the last film with Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman who broke apart later that year. Perhaps because of this collapsing partnership this film remains the weakest film in the Bond series to date. All but Christopher Lee�s Scaramanga (One of the best Bond Villains due to Lee�s skilled and charming performance) seems uninspired and boring. Even the legendary John Barry seemed to be stuck in a creative rut on this score producing what is undoubtedly the most boring of all the bond scores.
The opening song is one of the bond songs near the bottom of the now 20 long list (Madonna�s at the bottom). Lulu�s performance although powerful is way too over the top and exaggerated and the actual theme is probably as far from a normal bond theme as you could probably get with a strong jazz beat, its enjoyable enough but when the score is over this fails to be any kind of memorable theme.
Much of the music in the score is flat suspense. Scaramanga�s theme in both �Scaramanga�s Fun House� and �Return To Scaramanga�s Fun House� is a short string piece that neither holds suspense or any personality. Another problem with it is it never expands beyond it�s original rising 9 note motif. Track 5 exhibits more tension music which usually would be welcome and gripping. In this case however, the music is jarring and holds little interest for two reasons. The music just isn't that interesting. Also it never seems to come to an effective climax or appear to gather any pace at all. In other Barry scores the suspense created is excellent and you really get drawn into the music as the music slowly cranks up the feeling of danger and the track builds up to a climax. This track doesn't, it just sort of dies out.
The love scenes of Golden Gun are simple string versions of the theme repeated endlessly for several minutes. As the theme itself isn't very good this is a major problem as it hold no feeling of romance at all. The tracks, (Goodnight Goodnight and End Title) display no sweeping moments and lack any interesting orchestration or arrangement of the theme.
The action music for Golden Gun is equally boring, for the same reasons as the romantic cues. Also there is very little action music which does not help. Most of the action is given a long, drawn out build up with a single loud brass blast at the end. There is none of the usual pounding action music we expect from John Barry.
Only tracks 10 and 11 offer any reasonable material totalling 7 or 8 minutes of what in other Bond scores would be average John Barry music and that�s the key problem with this CD. Much of the music is close to the worst Barry has written for the Bond series. Whilst there�s nothing discordant or painfull to listen to its just boring, just plain n� boring.
Golden Gun is a drab and lurid score with apart from 1 pretty good tension cue and 1 espionage cue nothing to engage the listener, even a hardcore John Barry fan would find it hard to call this anything beyond �allright� warily. The best on this CD is the average on any other John Barry Bond release and so simply put its not worth the price of the disk.
*
1. The Man With The Golden Gun � Performed by Lulu � Lyrics by Don Black
2. Scaramanga�s Fun House
3. Chew Me is Crisly Land
4. The Man With The Golden Gun (Instrumental)
5. Getting The Bullet
6. Goodnight Goodnight
7. Let�s Go Get �Em
8. Hip�s Trip
9. Kung Fu Fight
10. In Search of Scaramanga�s Island
11. Return To Scaramanga�s Fun House
12. End Title: The man With The Golden Gun � Performed by Lulu
Release Label: EMI Manhattan Records
Date Released: 1988
