That right there is a break from the typical megalomaniac who wants to take over the world with some over-contrived plan. The plot is about the world's most expensive assassin, who kills all of his victims with a golden bullet from his titular golden gun.
It had everything going for it to become one of the greater entries in the series, but somehow managed to fuck all that up.
The Man With the Golden Gun is ruined potential. So I guess it's fair to think of it that way. So I was comparing The Man With the Golden Gun to what was mostly shit. At that time, though, the only other Bond films I had seen were Die Another Day, A View to a Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World is Not Enough. There was a point in time when I thought that The Man With the Golden Gun was one of the better of the Bond films.