James Bond Marathon: Goldfinger

TV Tropes refers to this film as "The one pop culture parodies the most." Well, it certainly does have some of the most memorable moments, but is it the best Bond film of all time? Light your torches and grab your pitchforks, because I don't really think so.

After a cold opening involving "heroin-flavoured bananas" and a shocking death, Bond is relaxing in Miami Beach when his old friend Felix Leiter assigns him a mission to observe Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Frobe, who has been winning at gin rummy too much. Bond disrupts Goldfinger's scam, resulting in his assistant Jill Masterson being killed by being painted gold, even though the film's explanation would result in anybody who puts on a wetsuit suffocating. But I digress. Anyway, Bond is sent to determine whether or not Goldfinger is illegally transporting his gold across the continents, but soon learns of a scheme known as Operation Grand Slam - a plot by the Chinese government to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox, causing economic collapse in the West while boosting the value of Goldfinger's own bullion reserves.

Despite the comments at the beginning, I don't actually hate this movie. There are some really enjoyable things, like the gadget-equipped Aston Martin DB5 that Bond uses, Goldfinger's Korean manservant Oddjob and his steel-rimmed top hat, Honor Blackman as aloof girl of the week Pussy Galore, not to mention the scene with the laser that everybody knows. However, I find the film's biggest issue to be a glaring one: Bond is a bystander. He gets captured in the first act, then he doesn't really do much after talking his way out of getting sawn in half. Leiter and the cavalry defeat the villains in the climax, although Bond does kill Oddjob, and they're the ones who disable the bomb. I actually find myself more interested in following Goldfinger's plan. He seems to have more pragmatism than other villains, like when the plan goes wrong, he reveals a colonel's uniform under his coat and kills his Chinese contact to avoid detection.

I suppose the other issue is that after Goldfinger, the films did tend to get a bit formulaic. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I'll be back tomorrow when James Bond returns in Thunderball.


Hang on a minute. Did Bond just force himself on Pussy Galore? Christ, no wonder I was rooting for the bad guy.