Every actor that played James Bond snuck off between OO7 adventures to make other films. Arguably Roger Moore's best effort was 1974's GOLD, filmed between his debut as Bond, "Live and Let Die" and its follow up, "The Man with the Golden Gun".
As the film opens and the main credits roll, it feels like Moore took much of the Bond crew with him to make it!
The main title credits are by Maurice Binder, it's directed by Peter Hunt, who directed one of my Bond favorites, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". John Glen, who would later direct many of Moore's Bond films, edited this one. The list goes on.
The plot will also sound familiar to fans of both "Goldfinger" and "A View to a Kill"!
Moore plays South African gold mine foreman Rod Slater, who unwittingly gets pulled into a plot by a wealthy cabal led by Farrell (John Gielgud) and Rod's boss Manfred Styner (Bradford Dillman) to flood a huge mine field, burying 30% of the world's gold supply and manipulating world financial markets.
Styner's wife Terry (Susannah York) is the daughter of the mine's owner "Pops" Hirschfield, played by Ray Milland as the same grumpy old patriarch he played in 1972's "Frogs".
Rod and Terry fall fall in love and Director Hunt spends a bit too much time on their affair, slowing down the film. You start to feel its two hour+ running time a bit. But Hunt has proven he's an excellent action director and anytime the film is focused on the mine operation, it moves nicely.
The screenplay is by Wilbur Smith, the British, South African novelist who adapted his own novel here and wrote legendary action adventure novels like "Shout at the Devil" and "Dark of the Sun". His novels are pulpy, old-fashioned thrillers that provide fantastic summer reads. I started with his African Safari thriller "A Time to Die" and was hooked. Hunt and Moore teamed up two years after this film to direct and star in the film version of "Shout at the Devil" co-starring Lee Marvin. I've got to add that to my watch list.
Moore is in full Bond mode but has fun playing an everyday man with a sense of humor and a nose for bullshit. Watching him square off with his boss, Dillman is enjoyable. Dillman can be charming when he plays a good guy. He was excellent in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes". He's a bit off-putting as a baddie, just as he was two years later as Dirty Harry's stick-up-his-ass boss in "The Enforcer". He's a bit too stiff.
Moore and York have great chemistry and are clearly having fun together, it comes across on screen.
As the film goes on, it gets better and better, including a rousing and suspenseful conclusion as Slater leads a rescue operation far below the surface.
Elmer Bernstein's music score is pure 70's action and the film got an Oscar nomination for best song for its love theme "Wherever Love Takes Me" sung by Maureen McGovern. The song lost to "We May Never Love Like This Again" from "The Towering Inferno", ALSO sung by Maureen McGovern!
Moore also made the enjoyable thriller "Ffolkes" in 1980, but I like this one a bit better.
The best film made in the 70's by a Bond between adventures remains "The Anderson Tapes" from Sean Connery, but GOLD is a passable old gem, earning a B-.
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