Goldfinger

With its flabby midsection and overlong running time, Goldfinger isn’t quite the perfect James Bond flick it’s been built up to be over the years – yet there’s little doubt that the film is consistently buoyed by the inclusion of many indelible moments and characters (eg Oddjob, the Fort Knox showdown, etc). The movie follows Sean Connery’s James Bond as he’s dispatched to look into a ruthless gold magnate’s (Gert Frobe’s Auric Goldfinger) shady business dealings, with his efforts consistently thwarted by Goldfinger‘s mute, bowler-hat-throwing henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) and loyal pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). More than Dr. No or From Russia With Love, Goldfinger generally feels like a template for the Bond-movie formula – as the film possess virtually all of the elements that one has come to associate with the franchise. It’s also clear that the movie ultimately fares better than its immediate predecessor, as screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn offer up a streamlined plot that’s generally free of needless elements – which is certainly a far cry from the sporadic time-wasting excess of From Russia With Love. The superb performances – in addition to Connery’s expectedly charming work, Frobe and Blackman effectively step into the shoes of, respectively, an unapologetically flamboyant villain and a formidable (and rare) sexual challenge for 007 – and memorable set-pieces ensure that Goldfinger remains a cut above its Bond brethren, with its far-from-surprising overlength proving to be its only real deficiency.

*** out of ****