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Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He's fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor...except crime!
- GOLD...FINGER! If you limit yourself to just one Bond film, it should probably be this one. Sure, it lacks that modicum of subtlety possessed by the first two films in the series, but then this is James Bond we're talking about here. Hat-tossing henchmen? Sure! Passenger ejector seats? Absolutely! While such excesses might be unforgivable in a film striving for plausibility, they are a big part of what we have come to love about Bond. After all, would you really want to see a serious film about detonating a nuclear device at Fort Knox? I hardly think so. International terrorism should be fun!
- The fun begins in a big way as James Bond (Sean Connery) infiltrates a Latin American drug lord's lair and blows it up real good only to reveal, in one of the series' most iconic moments, that he was wearing a tuxedo the entire time. Unfortunately, Bond's subsequent massage-heavy vacation gets cut short when American agent Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) puts Bond on the trail of a man named Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe). At first, the rotund Goldfinger comes across as a small-time operator who, with the assistance of kept woman Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), grafts old men out of their pensions. It is only when Bond awakes to discover Masterson's dead body on his bed that he fully appreciates the seriousness of his adversary. This indelible image of a gold-plated corpse and John Barry's haunting score complement one another perfectly to create what is easily the film's best and most memorable scene.
- After the requisite consultations with those esteemed men of letters, M (Bernard Lee) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn), and the ever-optimistic Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), Bond confronts Goldfinger in a nominally friendly game of golf. It is at this point that we meet one of the series' most terrific creations, the mute henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata). We suspect that we recognize this stout Korean's silhouette from the moments before Jill Masterson was killed, but his golfball-crushing and bowler-throwing tendencies remove any lingering doubts from our minds. Of course, the entire affair is little more than an excuse for Bond to plant a tracking device on Goldfinger's car, which itself provides an excuse for a trip to Geneva. A few exciting, gadget-laden car chases and one more dead Masterson (Tania Mallet) later, Bond finds himself strapped to a table in Goldfinger's refinery. In what has become a famous exchange, Bond inquires: "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" Goldfinger rejoins. His laser may be sufficiently strong to carve element atomic number 79, but could any weapon be powerful enough to emasculate Bond?
- At the risk of spoiling the ending, I will admit that Bond is not killed. He is, however, made a houseguest of Mr. Goldfinger's in Kentucky, which is probably a fate worse than death from 007's perspective. There, Goldfinger has his employee, a formidable pilot named...ahem, Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), parade Bond around under the CIA's watchful eyes. Despite her cringe-inducing name, Galore is actually one of the more interesting and capable Bond girls, even if her final reformation seems a bit far-fetched. Still, these characters are hardly any more difficult to swallow than Goldfinger's mad scheme, a truly "inspired" assault on Fort Knox that is a marked improvement upon the plot that appeared in Ian Fleming's source material. Fortunately, the direction and soundtrack rise up to the scale of this monumental assault, and it is doubtful that there is a more exciting ending to any film in the Bond pantheon. The other films may have their moments of greatness, but Goldfinger reigns supreme.
- Attache case damaged upon inspection. Hilarious!
- The bomb gets deactivated when the clock reads 007. Excellent.
