Three Blokes and a Chick Watch: Goldfinger
For me, weekends mean booze, video games and movies. I do this in the company of my other half and two very good friends. We often notice things about films we love, and because we care we pull them apart and chastise them. Here’s the first in a series of mini-reviews, the cliff notes of what’s wrong with a film, if you will. We start with Goldfinger, with aims to eventually cover all the Bond films…except Never Say Never Again, because watching Thunderball is bad enough, let alone Thunderball with no recognisable characters, no signature theme tune and an ageing Sean Connery in a bad toupee.
This recap should be considered spoilerriffic, so if you haven’t seen a Bond film from 1964 then you’ve only yourself to blame.
What’s the film about?
If there’s one thing England hates, it’s people stealing their gold. It’s a quiet week at MI6 so M assigns Bond the task of keeping tabs on Auric Goldfinger, because the Bank of England thinks he’s smuggling gold out of the country and yet can’t work out how as the only way he travels is in his Rolls Royce Phantom III (hint: he’s been casually driving the gold out of the country the entire time). Following the serious mission that was From Russia with Love, Bond sarcastically swaggers through this mission with all the care of an alcoholic trapeze artist. By sheer coincidence, it turns out that slowly driving England’s gold supply out of the country bit-by-bit is the least of Goldfinger’s insidious ploys, and it’s not too long before Bond finds himself trying to save Fort Knox from an atomic bomb. He must rely on his clumsiness, sheer dumb-luckery and insatiable sexual appetite to foil his foe; in all honesty if Bond had a French accent this film could almost pass for a Pink Panther movie.
Who are the characters?
- James Bond: Connery’s third outing, and one of his most iconic despite the fact that Bond does sod all in this film.
- Auric Goldfinger (a.k.a. Baron Bomburst a.k.a. Colonel Manfred von Helstein): a German actor playing an Englishman dubbed by an Englishman using a vaguely German voice.
- Oddjob: Goldfinger’s Korean manservant, teaching the world that Korea only has two words in its native tongue: “aaah aaah”.
- Pussy Galore: Ian Fleming’s idea of a subtle innuendo, the only role Honor Blackman will ever be remembered for (in fact I’m surprised she hasn’t changed her name by deed poll by now).
- The Masterson sisters: Jill and Tilly, both die unceremoniously due to Bond’s complete inability to be a spy (the clue is in the job title, Bond!).
- Felix Leiter: Bond’s American CIA counterpart shows about as much competence as Bond in this film. “Hey guys, we’re over here by the fence, blatantly holding binoculars and spying on you, Mr. Goldfinger!”
What does Bond achieve?
- Manages to get the Masterson sisters killed; Jill is covered in gold paint by Oddjob and suffocates after Bond interrupts her aiding Goldfinger to cheat at cards, and Tilly is shot to death after Bond manages to get them cornered on a cliff face near Goldfinger’s factory.
- Earns £5000 by cheating at golf in a match with Goldfinger, almost losing a gold bar loaned in good faith to him by the Bank of England.
- He gets caught at least twice, and spends most of the film as Goldfinger’s prisoner.
- Almost gets his nuts burned off when Goldfinger straps him to his gold cutting laser table.
- He rapes a woman into changing her sexual preference and dobbing in her comrades to the authorities.
- Gets beaten up by short Korean man.
- Has to be saved by the Americans.
So what happens?
The film opens with Bond infiltrating a collection of large gas tanks via water. He’s introduced sneaking in via water, with a seagull strapped to his head. Either this is one of Q’s cutting-edge inventions, or it’s something Bond came up with himself thinking that it was genuinely a good piece of camouflage – I like to think the latter.
Inside one of the gas tanks is a hidden office. Bond lines a conveniently placed set of petrol tanks sat in the office with C4 and leaves promptly. He strips off his wetsuit to reveal a pristine white-jacket/black trousers tuxedo underneath (MI6 presumably pioneered wetsuit technology the likes of which we still haven’t seen). He detonates the C4, possibly (“heroically”) killing hundreds in the process, and enters a nearby bar. Bond demonstrates his prowess in blending in by calmly walking past all the fleeing bar patrons and not acting the least bit concerned. He goes to get it on with a lady, and we’re treated to the bit that inspired the scene in Austin Powers 2 where he sees an attacker reflected in the eyes of the woman he’s holding. He kills the dude by knocking him into a bathtub and throwing a lamp in to the water, electrocuting the guy. Bond’s response? “Shocking. Positively shocking.” (Classic!)
One opening credits sequence later, Bond’s at a resort in Miami with his next f*ck-buddy Dink. His friend Felix Leiter of the CIA greets him, and with a masochistic slap on the arse Bond gets her to leave so he can have a “man talk” with Felix (nice to see this film hasn’t aged a bit). Felix gives him orders from MI6 to watch the shit out of the guy playing cards at a nearby table, Auric Goldfinger (“sounds like a French nail varnish”, puns Bond). Bond interprets his orders as “break into Goldfinger’s apartment” and finds a woman lying half naked overlooking the resort from Goldfinger’s balcony. It’s Jill Masterson, and via a pair of binoculars and a radio she’s helping Goldfinger cheat at cards (her binoculars are apparently magic as the view through them keeps switching perspective). Apparently she’s been helping him fleece the same guy all week, which raises the following questions:
- Why would the guy keep coming back when he hasn’t won a single game? Can’t he tell Goldfinger’s a card shark?
- Isn’t the guy a little bit suspicious that Goldfinger keeps playing with the dial on his “hearing aid”?
- Isn’t he even more suspicious that Goldfinger always wants to sit in the same seat? Working on his tan, my arse!
Bond foils Goldfinger by taking Jill back to his room for sexy times. Oddjob knocks his arse out and paints Jill to death with gold paint (it would make more sense if he just killed her with his bare hands and then painted her as a message, but it’s implied that it was paint suffocation that killed her – perhaps Bond just jumps to the conclusion). When Bond comes around and finds the body, he picks up the phone. Instead of calling room service and saying “hello? I’ve just found a dead woman in my bed”, he calls Felix, who surprisingly doesn’t reply by saying “Really? Another one, James?”.
Back in London, Bond is given a slap on the wrists and is invited to a meal with M and the head of the Bank of England. While at the meal Bond displays an absurd knowledge of brandy (must be useful to have in his line of work, I’m sure). He is briefed to follow Goldfinger and is given a bar of Nazi gold to use as bait for if he needs to gain Goldfinger’s attention; he’s not allowed to lose the bar though, so it makes for fairly pointless bait.
Bond goes to see Q, who instantly hates him the minute he walks through the door. Bond asks after his Bentley, and is told that it has been decommissioned and that he has been given a brand spanking new Aston Martin DB5 (Bond genuinely regards his new car with a look of contempt despite it looking like hot shit you’d give your left arm for). Q gives him a run-down of all the car’s gadgets, including the Google maps interface built into the dashboard (apparently Q invented Google maps) and an ejector seat built into the car’s passenger seat for no obvious reason.
The next day Bond is introduced to Goldfinger at a golf club as a random guy who’s apparently been a long-standing member of the club who’s coincidentally there just in time to fill in for Goldfinger’s regular golf partner. Shortly after the scene we learn that Goldfinger actually owns this particular golfing club, so he was probably on to Bond the minute he saw him if he has the slightest knowledge of who attends his club1. During the game Bond wagers the bar of gold he’s been told not to lose (not to further his investigation but instead to win £5000 he doesn’t have to declare to line his pockets). Goldfinger cheats, but Bond shows he’s even more of a cheater and wins the game. Following the game Bond places a tracer on Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce and is basically told by Goldfinger to either f*ck off and leave him alone, or die. Goldfinger emphasises the point by having Oddjob decapitate a statue with his bowler hat. Presumably the caddy who helped Bond to cheat/win lost his job.
Bond follows Goldfinger to the Swiss mountains. Goldfinger stops for a bite to eat and Bond watches him from a road above him. Above Bond (on another road) a female sniper takes a pot shot and almost misses Bond. We find out in a bit that this is Jill’s sister Tilly and that she was aiming for Goldfinger. A few points on this:
- Tilly is clearly a terrible shot with her rifle. She could have hit Bond, but even worse she could have completely taken out one of the kids selling apples on the road below near Goldfinger.
- Oddjob looks upwards following the shot (apparently Goldfinger didn’t hear the very loud gunshot) and just smiles. He appears to be indifferent (possibly uncaring) towards an attempt on his master’s life.
Bond’s sexy-sense kicks in and he gives chase, shredding the wheels on Tilly’s car with Boudicea spikes on the Aston’s wheels. Tilly looks at her tyres and, rather than screaming “what the bloody hell did you do to the side of my car?!” instead believes Bond’s rather poor explanation of “must have been a double blow-out”. Bond proceeds to grin and stare at her like a complete letch while transporting her to the nearest petrol station.
Bond spends the rest of the day sat on a hill overlooking Goldfinger’s factory – the scene fades out to evening, where he has a complete change of outfit and equipment. It’s nice to think that, given the tact displayed thus far, he probably got changed there on the hill in broad daylight where everyone could see him. He makes his way into Goldfinger’s compound and spies a look at a crew of Chinese workers melting down the gold bodywork of Goldfinger’s car. He overhears the words “Operation Grand Slam” while Goldfinger gives a tour to the leader of the Chinese workers. While skulking away, he’s distracted by some rustling nearby (either that or his sexy sense was tingling again) and he pounces on a figure dressed in black, who turns out to be Tilly. In the process he nudges he rifle into a really obvious tripwire (amazing that Bond hadn’t triggered one before, to be honest; put it down to dumb luck!) and a score of Chinese workers give chase in sedans as Bond and Tilly make their escape in the Aston.
During the chase we see Bond use every single one of Q’s gadgets, pretty much blowing the movie’s load for action for the next half an hour all in one go. One notable moment is, after skidding on an oil slick, one of the Chinese sedans approaches a cliff and bursts into flame before even going over the edge (must be one of those movie laws of physics in the Bond universe).
Bond manages to get himself and Tilly trapped on the edge of a cliff. Although one quick nudge from a sedan could knock Bond and his car over the edge, the Chinese instead surround them and a gunfight begins. Tilly sensibly deduces that sticking around with Bond will probably get her killed, but unfortunately decides that the best course of action is to run out of cover into protracted machine-gun fire. Bond immediately swoops on to her corpse to see if he can salvage any potential sexytimes with Tilly, but she’s dead as a doornail. He’s led away by the Chinese, who make the incredibly smart move of forcing Bond to drive the car he just kicked their arses with at gunpoint. Bond inevitably speeds away at the first opportunity and uses the ejector seat to remove the bewildered Chinese chap (seriously, the henchman just watches Bond driving as they speed away) with the gun from his passenger seat. Lucky that Q made the assumption that if Bond was taken prisoner, it would be in his own car.
Bond drives around Goldfinger’s facility like he’s in some sort of Scooby Doo cartoon being chased by a monster, almost getting shot to pieces by an old lady with an MP40 in the process. He drives down a narrow alleyway towards some headlights and, rather than slamming the car into reverse and getting out of there, proceeds to drive at top speed honking his horn. He loses the game of chicken by driving into a wall. Oddjob approaches and regards a mirror affixed to the wall, a small one probably used to assist with reversing out of the alley. Bond lost a game of chicken with his reflection. Truly, he is England’s greatest spy!
The most iconic scene of the film follows, with Bond strapped down to a table as a laser slowly lasers its way up the table towards his nuts. Bond tries to talk his way out but Goldfinger couldn’t give a flying f*ck and informs Bond that he’s going to get lasered to death. It’s only when Bond bluffs by knowing about “Operation Grand Slam” when the leader of the Chinese workforce (we can tell he’s the boss because he’s played by Burt Kwouk a.k.a. Cato in glasses in a smarter suit) suddenly looks worried. Goldfinger’s not having any of this sh*t and claims that “three words that you may have overheard that could not possibly have any meaning to you”. Bond suggests he can’t take that chance. Rather than turn the laser up to full and cut Bond in half, Goldfinger pussies out at the Chinese boss’ request and has a (very smug) scientist shoot Bond up with some grade-A tranquillisers.
Bond awakens in a plane. He meets Pussy Galore and the film drags its heels for ten minutes as we’re treated to some exposition and Bond being led to his prison cell beneath Goldfinger’s Kentucky condo. Bond escapes the cell by walking up to the barred window of his cell door and then popping below the window. His moronic Chinese guard genuinely seems to believe that Bond has disappeared and enters the cell, only to be attacked by Bond from the ceiling. The guard is fooled by a game of peek-a-boo.
Meanwhile, Goldfinger is playing host to two Mafia families and one individual trader (who just happens to be called “Mr. Solo” while being the only person in the room to come without support) in his massive lounge. He presses a button and the room transforms into a war room, complete with a model of Fort Knox. Unknown to him, Bond’s cell adjoins the room under the model, and Bond has taken to hiding under the model while Goldfinger reveals his master plan to the mobsters. Within the next five minutes Goldfinger intends to kill everyone in the room anyway, so why he goes to the lengths of pretence when he could have just locked the doors and gassed everyone is anyone’s guess. It’s almost as if he’s unveiling his plan for Bond’s benefit.
Goldfinger’s grand scheme involves flying nerve gas over Fort Knox and then breaking in to rob the gold. He even has a live can of the aforementioned nerve gas to show the Mafia, which seems a little bit risky. It’s nice to note that Die Hard 3 went to lengths to dismiss this film’s evil scheme. To quote Simon Gruber, “$140 billion dollars! Ten times what’s in Kentucky! Fort Knox? HA! It’s for tourists!”. Bond writes a note on a bit of paper with a pencil and slips it into his pocket shortly before Pussy finds him and holds him at gunpoint. Upstairs, Solo isn’t having any of Goldfinger’s bullshit and wants his money now, so he’s led out upstairs as Bond is led out downstairs. The smug scientist from earlier puts on a gas mask, locks the doors and kills everyone in the room upstairs using nerve gas.
Back outside, Bond is introduced to Solo. Bond now buggers up by slipping the note wrapped around the tracer Q placed in his shoe into Solo’s pocket, because presumably at this point he really does think that Goldfinger is going to let the man drive off with a billion dollars’ worth of his gold. We’re treated to an overly long sequence where Oddjob drives Solo to the scrapyard and has the car crushed with the man’s body inside it (presumably one of the inspirations for the car-crushing sideline in the early Grand Theft Auto games). Bond gets to see just how much he’s buggered up when a pickup returns with the cube-ified car and Goldfinger announces that he’s going to have to have Mr. Solo separated from his gold.
His friend Felix Leiter from the CIA has been trying to find Bond all the while, resorting to the amazingly subtle tactic of standing visibly at the fence to Goldfinger’s estate holding binoculars. They’re so subtle that they’re picked up almost immediately, and Goldfinger has Bond led out for drinks just to put on a show. This isn’t at all suspicious to Felix, so he f*cks off assuming the best.
Bond (now having a pleasant drink with Goldfinger), after doing some atomic fallout calculations out loud (his second favourite topic after matured brandy, presumably), realises that Goldfinger isn’t going to steal the gold (like in the original book) because it would take too long – instead he’s going to nuke the gold supply as radioactive gold is worthless, meaning that the global worth of Goldfinger’s stock will rise incredibly.
Having presumably given up on trying to stop Goldfinger’s plan, Bond goes for a walk with Pussy across the estate. Every time he says her name (or “Pusshy” as Connery pronounces it) you can’t help but feel that he’s not so much addressing her, but instead just announcing what’s on his mind. They end up at a barn and, after some judo throws, Bond pins her down in the hay and starts kissing her. She resists, but then gives in. This is the lead into what presumably is an off-screen rape scene (or a “literal roll in the hay” as most books that talk about this film describe it). Bond’s sexual prowess actually not only changes her sexual preference (Pussy’s clearly a lesbian), but also changes her allegiances – we’re not told until later that she informs the CIA. Bond’s act of rape accidentally saves the day.
Operation Grand Slam commences. Pussy’s Flying Circus sprays nerve gas over Fort Knox and hundreds of soldiers keel over. On a second viewing this is particularly funny because the viewer knows that Pussy has switched out the nerve gas for something non-lethal, and apparently to fool Goldfinger and his men the CIA have gone to great lengths to hide that the soldiers are faking, including having several cars genuinely crash and kill their drivers.
Felix is there too, mostly just to tip off the audience that he might have somehow found out about Goldfinger’s plan.
Goldfinger doesn’t suspect anything despite the planes not being shot down or the gas in the atmosphere apparently dissipating almost instantly, so the plan proceeds (why he even needs to be there in person is a mystery). His convoy blows through the gates and they use the laser to break into the main vault. They unload the bomb on to one of Fort Knox’s trolleys (in fact in happens to fit perfectly), handcuff Bond to the trolley and then move it into the main vault. The bomb is turned on. This causes some device Felix Leiter is carrying to start making noise, which is apparently the signal to get the army to stop pretending to be dead. Why they have to wait for the bomb to be turned on seems a little bit daft (as that’s apparently the purpose of Felix’s device), surely the act of trying to break in was reason enough to prosecute Goldfinger?
A fire-fight ensues between the army and Goldfinger’s Chinese crew. Seeing the tide turn, Goldfinger shoots Burt Kwouk and takes his coat off to reveal a full U.S. Army officer’s uniform. The soldiers don’t recognise him (did the CIA not even bother to hand out pictures of the guy?) or catch on to the fact he’s using a gold-plated revolver or speaking in a funny accent. Goldfinger manages to lock the vault before escaping, leaving Bond, Oddjob and the random smug guy from earlier trapped inside.
Random smug guy freaks out and goes to turn off the bomb, but Oddjob throws him over a railing for insolence. The guy happens to land near Bond, who take the opportunity to search his corpse for the key to his handcuffs. There’s a genuine look of “oh, shit” on Oddjob’s face when he realises what he’s done, and he has to run down a massive staircase to reach Bond. Oddjob tries throwing his hat at Bond, but Bond defeats the technique by simply ducking out of the way (“Curses! Ducking! My only weakness!”).
Bond gets out of the handcuffs and tries to fight Oddjob, but it’s like watching a five year old try to beat up a sumo wrestler. At one point he gets Oddjob’s bowler, which genuinely seems to scare Oddjob (“Curses! My own hat! My other only weakness!”), but Bond can’t throw for shit and gets it lodged between two bars on one of the gold cages. Oddjob goes to retrieve it, so Bond sportingly grabs a severed electrical cable and places it against the cage, killing the man outright (lucky the bars were linked, eh?). Bond cracks open the bomb crate and stares at the swirly dials and coloured wires, because this atomic bomb was apparently but together by the Joker (either that or real atomic bombs really do have lots of colourful pointless moving bits on them). The fort’s soldiers finally get into the vault as the bomb’s timer ticks down, and Bond’s about to just randomly pull apart some coloured cables (way to keep your cool, Bond!) when he’s stopped by a spectacled CIA agent, who reaches over and just turns the thing off. The real hero of our tale!
Despite it being the CIA agent who saved the day, Bond is invited to dinner with the President. On the plane Goldfinger appears, intending to go to Cuba and kill Bond (not in that order). Bond gets into a fight with him for the gun and Goldfinger shoots out one of the windows. The cabin de-pressurises and Goldfinger is comically sucked out of one of the windows. Pussy (who’s at the planes controls) can pull it up in time, and we cut to the CIA watching some sort of radar of the plane plummeting, but a separate blip marks two people parachuting out.
Felix sits in a helicopter circling the crash site looking for Bond, and fails to see the bright orange mass of the parachute or the woman in the gold leotard waving to him (best CIA agent ever!). Bond says “oh no you don’t” while embracing her and pulling the parachute over the both of them, presumably for the second round of Bond rape. Credits roll.
So how is the film overall?
It’s good! Despite showing it’s age (which is a good thing really, to be representative of its era) and the fact that a lot of it doesn’t really make any sense, there’s a reason it’s always on all-time greatest movie lists. It’s Connery in his prime, despite how he doesn’t really do anything. Goldfinger is a memorable villain and Pussy Galore…gave Honor Blackman a reason to be famous for the rest of her life.
It’s an iconic film, and you should give it a watch. In fact you should have watched it before reading this really, stupid.
- Truth be told, another interpretation could be that Goldfinger buys the club after his loss to Bond out of pure spite. ↩
Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | August 11, 2012 at 1:08 pm | Films, James Bond, Three Blokes and a Chick Watch | No comment
Tags: 007, Gert Frobe, Goldfinger, James Bond, movie recap, movie review, rape, Sean Connery