Goldfinger (1964)
Just another day in the life of 007.
James Bond (Sean Connery) has just thwarted a drug-sponsored terrorist ring and is prepared for some R&R in Miami until he is told to investigate Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), whom the British government suspects of smuggling gold. Soon, Bond stumbles upon a plot to completely cripple the American economy.
Goldfinger was the third Bond film, and I have to say, almost in every way, it is the perfect Bond film. Sean Connery, the first Bond, is still considered to have given the best performance of the character. I think that can be debatable, but I definitely enjoyed his performance in Goldfinger, as I did that of Frobe in his over-the-top portrayal of the title villain.
After having seen Deceiver, I can say it was definitely refreshing seeing suspense done right. I think it may be because Goldfinger simply sought to entertain (because, as I’m sure you know, entertainment sells tickets) the largest audience possible while Deceiver desperately wanted to be the smartest movie ever made. It helped that the movie had a solid score too; while Bond films do tend to have instrumentals of their title songs in the background, somehow the instrumental of Goldfinger worked especially well this time. Of course, Shirley Bassey’s performance of the title song is something worthy to note.
The only problem I had with the movie was that I felt Pussy Galore (pun very much intended, Honor Blackman) was possibly one of the less complete characters, even with respect to other Bond girls. As it is, Bond girls tend to just sort of hang around to look pretty, and I may be unfairly comparing her to the likes of Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale (2006) or Natalya Simonova from GoldenEye (1995) or even Agent Goodnight from The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) when Honey Rider and Tatiana Romanova were all that happened up until then, but its possible Goldfinger attempted to juggle too many Bond girls at once and thus sacrificed the character development for the sake of the number of beautiful women on screen.
Overall, Goldfinger is not only the perfect Bond film, but the perfect spy thriller overall. Yes, to watch it, you need to suspend your disbelief for all 2 hours, but basically, you have to watch Goldfinger.
Score: 4/4
I thought the laser seen was a little cheesey. Breaking into Fort Knox a little far fetched but with the suppension of disbelief no problem. And the idea of containinating gold to make yours more vaulalbe, brilliant! Worst Bond film = Die Another Day.
At the same time, the laser did have one of the most famous exchanges of Bond films:
Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Goldfinger; No, I expect you to die!
Also, while I didn’t see it, Die Another Day is generally agreed to be the worst Bond film. I personally felt Pierce Brosnan himself wasn’t a bad Bond, but he was stuck with some of the worst movies of the franchise. The only film of his I saw in its entirety was GoldenEye, which was enjoyable but definitely not as good as the better Sean Connery ones.
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