No shite. The only explanation is the wife was into Asian culture and dragged him along. Or maybe the local police invited him to a conference on how to train their men to be incompetent. Or possibly he lost a bet or won the trip for free. All explanations a stretch.
IMO the car chase flip with the COMEDIC SLIDE WHISTLE was THE low point of the film franchise.
But Moore slapping around Maud Adams was great. I think it would have been very interesting if he had played a "harder" Bond. Those rare scenes where he was a more ruthless Bond were very good.
I just can’t imagine Pepper willfully visiting Hong Kong. He was insulting every Asian in sight (”You pointy-heads !”), I’d have thought he’d consider it hell.
The comedic “slide whistle” was NOT the low point. The low point was the double-taking pigeon in “Moonraker” (even worse than the ludicrous laser battle with the space shuttles). Even having one of France’s arguably best actors, Michel Lonsdale, couldn’t save that turkey. Had they stuck more to the books, these likely would’ve been better films (but, of course, they wanted to capitalize on fads of the time, such as Star Wars and Star Trek, the latter of which came out that same year as MR, in 1979).
Moore recalled he hated getting rough with Ms. Adams, especially when he bent her arm back. He wanted to play the role like his old character, Simon Templar (”The Saint”) and less like Connery, which was always his weak spot where Bond was concerned. That’s the problem when you have two totally different types of actors playing the same part (the Scot peasant-brawler Connery vs. upper crust Englishman Moore). I seemed to remember when Dalton took over from Moore that THAT was a breath of fresh air. Hopefully I’ll feel the same with the current Blonde hitman-thug’s successor (assuming it’s not a Black midget vegan transgender lesbian who speaks Swedish).