In between "Live and Let Die" and "The Man with the Golden Gun" - one of my personal favorite James Bond flicks – Roger Moore took a little side trip to Johannesburg in South Africa, in order to star in this routine but nevertheless entertaining action/adventure movie. Rod Slater (Moore) is appointed as the General Manager of the prominent Sonderditch goldmine, but in fact the mine's owner and a couple of rich stakeholders in London have different plans with it. They intend to flood the mine and thus boost up the gold prices worldwide, so that they can profit more from prior investments. If their devious plans, loyally but unknowingly executed by Slater and his teams, succeed in time before Christmas, it will be the biggest mining catastrophe in African history. The basic storyline is quite thin and simplistic, so indeed the vast majority of the film exists of unnecessary padding footage, mainly focusing on the romance between James Bond and the bored wife of the corrupt mine owner. With a running time of two hours, "Gold" is definitely a bit overlong and we certainly didn't need so much "falling-in-love" collages with sappy musical guidance! The first fifteen and last twenty minutes are very exciting and tense, because these are the only times "Gold" actually looks like a disaster film. There are terrific performances from veteran actors Ray Milland (as the elderly and stubborn mining patriarch) and John Gielgud (as the brains behind the flooding conspiracy).
