As part of the Year of British cinema, us Brits have been treated to a number of one-off showings of Great British films on the big screen in brand spanking new digital prints,the first of which was the third outing for James Bond from 1964, Goldfinger.
After a LOT of persuasion, due to the fact that the film is now 43 years old, I managed to persuade the missus to come with me, and due in no small part to her snide comments during the film, I decided to put together an "alternative" review of Goldfinger (a film which I dearly love, by the way)
We begin with Bond blowing up some sort of military silo (it's possible that this is nuclear, but the ramifications of the entire area being an irradiated wasteland for 50 years after the explosion aren't really explored in any great depth)
Bond is soon back in London having a black tie dinner with M and a stuffy British colonel, where Bond procedes to take the piss about the poor quality brandy that M serves up to his guests.
It is at this dinner that the backstory is laid out for us-Auric; Goldfinger, a British multi millionaire (who, for some reason, talks in a thick German accent) is somehow smuggling gold in and out of the country to increase its value, and Bond is told to work out how he's getting the bullion through customs without being caught.
Goldfinger is in Miami, so Bond is soon poolside at a swanky hotel, receiving a massage from a beautiful masseuse, when CIA Agent, Felix Leiter, turns up to make Bond actually do some work. "Say goodbye to Felix-this is mantalk," says Bond, and smacks the masseuse on the bum. (If he tried this kind of behaviour now he would undoubtably be on the end of an unfavourable civil action for sexual harrasment, and possibly sexual assault.)
We cut to Goldfinger, who is involved in a crooked card game, where, by the use of a huge ear piece that he pretends is a hearing aid (but is in fact a radiowave receiver), he receives card information from a girl who is wearing nothing except a tiny bikini and a huge pair of binoculars.
Bond immediately works out what is going on, and charms a maid into letting him break into Goldfinger's hotel room (even though she doesn't know him from Adam and would probably be instantly dismissed for this flagrant breach of hotel security....)
He flirts a bit with Goldfinger's accomplice, then takes the microphone from her and tells Goldfinger to lose all his money at cards or face the wrath of .......hotel security. This obviously terrifies Goldfinger (a multimillionaire master criminal) so he does what Bond says.
Meanwhile, Bond has a chat with the girl (Tilly Masterson), and they both take the piss out of Goldfinger (even though they are right next to the still switched on microphone, so I assume Goldfinger can hear every word).
Bond has sex with the girl, but is knocked unconscious with a vicious karate chop from an unseen assailant while getting a bottle of champers out of the fridge. When he wakes up, the girl is dead -covered head-to-toe in gold paint and lying naked on the bed in one of the series most iconic images.
Now if you think about it, this death is ALL BOND'S FAULT. His reckless approach to contacting Goldfinger, the fact that he gets the girl involved in making Goldfinger look foolish, and then leaving the mic switched on are all tantamount to signing the girls death warrant.
Not to worry though, this is Bond, so we arent subjected to an hour of introspective Bergman-style agonised guilt. After winding up Goldfinger even further at a golf course, Bond meets Oddjob, Goldfinger's huge, mute Korean henchman, who proceeds to decapitate a statue with his steel brimmed hat. After a quick trip to Q, Bond is tooled up with a load of handy gadgets, and is soon driving his Aston Martin around the hills of Switzerland at dangerously high speeds.
He meets another girl (who is driving her car even faster than he is), so to get closer to her he uses the tyre slashing device of his Aston Martin to give her vehicle a double blow out at 80 miles an hour (seriously, if he tried this in real life he would be on a murder charge - the car would have triple flipped over the side of the mountain at the very least).
Fortunately, the car comes to a halt safely, and we discover that the girl is Jill Masterson, the sister of the girl killed by Goldfinger's henchman earlier. Later that night Bond is on a recce when he bumps in to Jill again. She has got Tilly's hunting rifle and is hoping to kill Goldfinger.
After a great car chase where Bond uses all the car's devices (smokescreen, oil slicks, etc, etc) he is cornered so he gets out of the BULLETPROOF car and bundles Jill out with him. He fires a few shots at the asian henchmen, and tells Jill to run to the trees. She gets about ten paces when Oddjob appears, and breaks her neck after chucking his bowler hat at her.
Way to go, James; directly responsible for the deaths of two sisters within the space of a few days. I hope they send him to the parents to break the news after all this is over!
Bond then hops back into the car and tries to escape, unfortunately he comes second in a game of chicken-with himself! He is fooled by a strategically placed mirror into swerving his car into a brick wall (in reality he has swerved to avoid the reflection of his own headlights-come on James you shitbag, I thought you were made of sterner stuff than this!). He wakes up attached to a gold table with an enormous laser placed above it. Goldfinger tells him he wants to know what he is up to or he will laser his testicles off (ok,he doesnt exactly say that but thats what he is implying...).
Bond chucks in a phrase he overheard earlier about Operation Grandslam, which interests Goldfinger enough to stop him from killing him and, instead, leaves him curious to find out out exactly what he knows. He does this by escorting him in style to his stud farm, which doubles up as his operational base where all the information Bond needs to know is stored (well done Mr Goldfinger if the mountain won't go to Mohammed...).
Bond soon escapes from his cell by tricking the Asian henchman who has been left guarding the door into thinking he has escaped (he does this by walking up to the door and ducking down out of site. I assume that the henchmen are either all on minimum wage, or are part of a scheme to get the mentally challenged back into the workplace to fall for such a simple trick, but I digress..)
Bond duly escapes and finds his way under the floor of the main building, where he ends up inside a lavish model of Fort Knox, enabling him to eavesdrop on the plans of Goldfinger, who has used every branch of American organised crime to provide him with the means to implement his dastardly plan; irradiate all the gold at Fort Knox, thereby increasing the value of his own stock of gold ten times over.
He has built a huge model of Fort Knox and converted his floor to slide back to present a massive scale model of the surrounding area, complete with flora and fauna, models of soldiers and vehicles, and replicas of all the surrounding buildings. He then pushes a button and a massively elaborate series of television screens swings round, while Goldfinger explains his plans to the mobsters (who he has invited to his ranch) in minute detail. He offers them a cut of the takings,and then leaves the room.A series of gas canisters are released and the gangsters are immediately gassed to death.
Now maybe Im missing the point here, but why did he go to the trouble of building all the above items if he was just going to kill everyone in the room anyway? Why even bring them to his ranch? Why not just order all the equipment he required and explain nothing? The mind boggles.....
Anyway, did I mention Pussy Galore, played by Honor Blackman? She was probably the oldest Bond girl right up to Maud Adams in Octopussy, but boy did she have sex appeal. Incredibly busty and an expert in judo and firearms, she is more than a match for Bond, who deals with this unexpected female strength by doing what any self respecting red blooded male in the sixties would have done - he takes her to the stables, attacks her with kung-fu blows, and then throws her over his shoulder onto her back, where he proceeds to jump on top of her and forcibly kiss her until she cant resist his manly ways any longer. I think now he would probably be looking at assault charges and maybe attempted rape as well, but she succumbs to his charms and tips off the CIA about Goldfinger's plans as well as switching the gas cannisters on her teams planes for non-lethal gas, thereby saving the day.
Additionally, Bond says the word "Pussy" at least 40 times during the film, which at times resembles a Carry On film for the amount of times he uses it as a double entendre.
After foiling Goldfinger's plans and getting a good beating from Oddjob, whom he does actually manage to kill by electrocuting him with a handy loose electrical cable, it is then left to Bond to dismantle the bomb that Goldfinger has left in the middle of Fort Knox. Inevitably he fails miserably at this, only to be saved by a bespectacled bomb disposal expert who bypasses all the masses of wires, levers, cogs, and chains, and simply flicks the on/off switch on the front of the bomb to the off position!!!
Goldfinger has made a getaway by cunningly wearing an American general's disguise under his patented mad megalomaniac outfit, but turns up again on the plane that is being used to take Bond to meet the President. "Are you having tea at the Whitehouse as well?" He asks Goldfinger before having a fist fight which results in shots being fired and Goldfinger being sucked out the small side window of the plane!!
The plane goes down, but Bond and Pussy eject in time, and end up in what appears to be a park but is supposed to be a forest, and they ignore the radio and the rescue planes so they can have another snog.
If you read all of the above, you will come to the same conclusion as my missus - Bond is an absolutely rubbish spy in this one. He fails at absolutely everything he attempts except when he kills Oddjob, he recklessly endangers 2 young women and is directly responsible for their deaths, he commits a variety of crimes that he would probably get at least fifteen years for, he crashes his car and is captured by the bad guy's henchmen, and his attempt to alert the CIA fails miserably when the note he has smuggled into a gangster's pocket is crushed into a 2 foot square chunk of metal (along with the gangster's car and the gangster himself!)
Goldfinger is the best Bond film ever made. It was the first one to really set the tone for the rest of the series, introducing many recognisable staples of Bond for the very first time (the unrelated pre-credits sequence, the trip to Q, over the top outlandish henchmen, and fat Megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur.) Ive seen it many, many times, but it was nothing short of a revelation on the big screen with a really appreciative audience. If you do get the chance to see it on the big screen, I urge you to take it if possible, you will really see the film in a new light.
In conclusion, a bonafide 5 star classic that is an absolute must see in any format.
