Francisco Scaramanga | the m0vie blog

A View to a Bond Baddie: Franz Sanchez

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate James Bond’s 50th birthday on screen (and the release of Skyfall), we’re going to take a look at the character and his films. We’ve already reviewed all the classic movies, so we’ll be looking at his iconic baddies, and even at the character himself.

As far as James Bond’s on-screen adversaries go, Franz Sanchez stands out for a number of reasons. Like Julian Glover as Aristotle Kristatos, Robert Davi seems like he might have wandered on to the set from a nearby sound stage. While the murky and subtle double-agent from For Your Eyes Only could have arrived from a John le Carré story, Franz Sanchez looks to have wandered out of Miami Vice. Licence to Kill represented an attempt by the producers to make Bond topical again, with mixed results. It’s still one of the most divisive films in the series.

Part of that attempt to modernise Bond was the decision to cast the character as a morally ambiguous anti-hero out for revenge, in contrast to the clean-cut morality of earlier adventures. However, Sanchez himself was also by-product of the attempt to modernise Bond. Bond was no longer hunting a spy, an assassin or a madman with plans of world domination. Instead, Bond found himself confronting a thug running an international drug cartel.

It’s all keeled over on him…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bond, Business and Economy, Chile, Fleming, Francisco Scaramanga, Franz Sanchez, Government, history, ian fleming, james bond, James Bond in film, Jets, Krest, Man With The Golden Gun, Sanchez, Shopping, South America, Tim Tebow, United States | 5 Comments »

A View to a Bond Baddie: Francisco Scaramanga

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate James Bond’s 50th birthday on screen, we’re going to take a look at the character and his films. We’ve already reviewed all the classic movies, so we’ll be looking at his iconic baddies, and even at the character himself.

You see, Mr Bond, like every great artist, I want to create an indisputable masterpiece once in my lifetime. The death of 007 mano a mano, face to face, will be mine.

You mean stuffed and displayed over your rocky mantelpiece?

That’s an amusing idea, but I was thinking in terms of history. A duel between titans. My golden gun against your Walther PPK. Each of us with a 50-50 chance.

Six bullets to your one?

I only need one.

Scaramanga and Bond

Was there ever a better Bond villain wasted in a more terrible film? Okay, maybe Christopher Walken as Max Zorin comes close, but Christopher Lee as Francisco Scaramanga feels like the only potentially redemptive aspect of the tonally mismatched The Man With The Golden Gun, a movie about a duel to a death that involves a karate school, secret lairs, giant frickin’ lasers and a slide whistle. Scaramanga is easily the most compelling thing about the whole film, and that might explain the contempt that many people hold for it. After all, the eponymous assassin is missing for most of the middle section of the film.

The eyes of a killer…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bond, Christopher Lee, christopher walken, Curzon Street, Fleming, Francisco Scaramanga, Guy Hamilton, ian fleming, james bond, James Bond in film, KGB, Kingsley Amis, Man With The Golden Gun, Max Zorin, Roger Moore, Rosa Klebb, Scaramanga, White Elephant | 8 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Man With The Golden Gun

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Darren

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

The Man With The Golden Gun is frequently derided as the worst film of the Roger Moore era, guilty of taking all the excesses of the period and turning them up to eleven. Being honest, I’m not entirely convinced. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bad film – one of the worst Bond films – but I’m not entirely convinced that it is as universally disappointing as Moonraker or as ridiculously underwhelming as Octopussy. There is, I’d argue, very possibly one tiny little gem buried amid this trainwreck of a Bond film – the man with the golden gun himself, as played by Christopher Lee.