Day 03 - Goldfinger (1964) - Film Review

Starring: Sean Connery, Gert Frobe, Harold Sakata & Honor Blackman

Screenplay: Richard Maibaum & Paul Dehn

Directed By: Guy Hamilton

Certificate: PG

With Day 3 we arrive at 'Goldfinger'. After destroying a shady facility in South America, Bond travels to Miami with the instruction to monitor gold bullion dealer, Auric Goldfinger. While there, Bond meets Goldfinger's employee Jill and soon after the two have sex, Bond is knocked unconscious. He awakes to find Jill dead, covered in gold paint. With her death fresh in his mind, MI6 task Bond with uncovering how Goldfinger smuggles bullion for profit across international borders. But as he investigates his target, Bond uncovers a much bigger plan at work, with grave implications for the West. 

'Goldfinger' gets off to a confident start with Bond on a short, snappy mission before the main plot kicks in. Bond blows up a facility, dispatches a goon by throwing them into electrified water and tutting "shocking" - and that's a chef's kiss moment if ever there was one. Then we're taken to the birth of a tradition that's since become a franchise staple - the iconic theme song over the opening credits. Shirley Bassey provides the very first Bond theme and sets the ball rolling with her appropriately named track, 'Goldfinger'. It's big and dramatic, yet still maintains a jazzy feel to it. Not only does it deliver a much classier opening than the last film, but it suits the tone of this one pretty well.

One of the things 'Goldfinger' does really well is streamline things and provide a much more back-to-basics plot. It's more akin to 'Dr. No' than 'From Russia With Love' in that sense. While the heavy Cold War politics of 'From Russia With Love' naturally meant that it could get more complicated when it came to who was working with who and which sides were deceiving the other, in 'Goldfinger' it's much more straightforward. You know who you're supposed to be rooting for and who the baddies are - it's a simpler structure but it works. There's no conspiracies this time - it's Bond up against a gold smuggler and for this film at least, that's all you need. While the first two films teased SPECTRE and built up this great mystery around Blofeld, I don't mind taking a break when the film's this entertaining. 

Even without the presence of SPECTRE behind him, Mr Auric Goldfinger is a great villain in his own right. His first on-screen victim painted gold apparently dies of "skin suffocation". Although the science of "skin suffocation" has about as many holes in it as a cheese grater, the imagery of Bond finding Jill lifeless and covered head to toe in gold is incredibly effective, so effective in fact that a golden Shirley Eaton even ended up on the cover of Life magazine. The man himself Goldfinger is about as subtle as his name, and all the better for it. He has a showroom to monologue his evil plan to his investors and a massive pulsing laser in his headquarters which he uses to threaten Bond and deliver the famous line: "No Mr Bond, I expect you to die.". And as henchmen go, Oddjob's great too and I can see why he's so fondly remembered. He barely speaks a word and you can never completely tell what he's thinking. Just like Goldfinger, he's cartoon-ish in all the right ways, even wielding a deadly hat capable of decapitating statues and used to kill Jill's sister, Tilly. It's a damn shame when Tilly gets killed too. I think she's the first woman in a Bond film to have actual character motivation as she tries to get revenge for her sister. She's not here for overly-indulgent shagging and that was a welcome change of pace.

The only real issue I take with 'Goldfinger' is the amount of time that it takes us to get to the entertaining stuff. It takes a fair amount of time for the plot to actually get going. Before Bond and Goldfinger can meet in person, there's a dinner with the governor of the Bank of England to sit through and then we're stuck playing several rounds of golf. These scenes of Bond and Goldfinger playing golf aren't entirely without merit. There's some tension between them but their games go on for way too long and ultimately just slow down the plot. Once it's going however, the plot is entertaining no doubt about it. Any film that ends with Oddjob and James Bond fighting it out in the vaults of Fort Knox, lobbing gold bars and a deadly hat at each other is a good film in my books. Just like Goldfinger subsequently getting sucked out of a plane, it's wonderfully silly but it works. 

Reassuringly, 'Goldfinger' feels much closer to 'Dr. No' than it does to 'From Russia With Love'. Not only are they both named after their main antagonists, they tell a simple to follow blockbuster plot with great entertainment value while simultaneously introducing franchise iconography. With the first proper Bond theme and introduction of gadgets such as the Aston Martin DB5, 'Goldfinger' is confirmation that the creative minds behind the series know what they're doing now and are on a roll. Like 'Dr. No', this isn't the most extraordinary film ever but it's often absurd and fun, and in my eyes an improvement over the more flawed 'From Russia With Love'. Now halfway into his tenure already, for now I can say that this is certainly my favourite of Sean Connery's Bond films. Although of course, there's nothing to say that won't change...

7/10

NEXT TIME - Thunderball