Goldfinger contains more crowd-pleasing moments than any other Bond film, including Oddjob's flying bowler, a laser beam that almost emasculates Bond, the lavishly accessorized Aston Martin DB5, and the bizarre murder of Goldfinger's secretary (Shirley Eaton): she's gilded to death. It also features Shirley Bassey's terrific rendition of the Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley title song.
I am a fan of the James Bond series, and Goldfinger is just amazing for so many reasons. As much as I love **** and From Russia with Love, I think Goldfinger is a serious contender for the best Bond film ever.
For me Goldfinger is the slickest of the Bond films in terms of how the stunts are performed and how the story is told. The story mayn't be the most exciting of all the Bonds, but it is still very gripping. The direction is sly, the cinematography is stylish, the locations are stunning and I can never get enough of the theme song sung by Shirley Bassey.
The script is sophisticated and humorous, while James Bond is still his suave and charismatic self, **** Galore is fabulously sexy and Auric Goldfinger himself ties with Blofeld as the best Bond villain, and a deliciously bizarre one he is too, being obsessed with gold and everything.
Other than the theme song and Goldfinger, the action is what makes this film. I love the gadget designs which are wonderfully over-the-top, while my favourite scenes include Shirley Eaton's legendary gold-plated death, the duel with the bowler-hatted sidekick Oddjob and the midair showdown between Bond and Goldfinger.
The acting is superb. Sean Connery gives his best performance as the character of Bond, although Connery is the master of suavity and charisma he is even more suave and charismatic here. Honor Blackman is sexy and enthusiastic as **** Galore, while Gert Frobe is amazing as Goldfinger. Overall, a golden treasure and a serious contender for the best ever Bond. 10/10 Bethany Cox
Having watched 25 Bonds from **** to Spectre, and having posted a review on each and every one of these movies, I can finally place Goldfinger at N°1. I watched these 25 movies with a friend, spent dozens of hours of watching and discussing all of them with him, and took so many hours putting down my thoughts on Metacritic to free my brain from all the Bonds.
And I still, since my childhood where I first saw it, do not change my opinion one tiny bit: Goldfinger is the peak, the masterpiece, the absolute and ultimate expression of what James Bond was all about.
Goldfinger is a masterpiece of Bond in so many ways, that words sort of fail me. By today's expectations of what a movie should be, lots of people would call it a bad movie, in the sense that Bond movies are self-indulgent, escapist fantasies about a man with some life experience but before middle-age (Sean Connery was 34 when he shot this movie), who travels the world, smacks girls' butts, has sex with ease, humiliates other (evil) men, kills other men but never gets hurt badly himself, and says cheesy lines every other sentence. By today's standards, many would just call it camp and move on.
But it is also an absolutely glorious movie, where the banter and mind games are incredibly memorable, the lines are glorious, the villain is so memorable and grows on you, from a fat, balding, ridiculous man to a mastermind of evil, the fights are just as much made in one's mind, as in fists, guns, and cars, gadgets and techno-madness, and victory is gained as much through all of those as it is gained through Bond's magic c*ck which wins him the villain's main girl over to the good guys. It's a movie that epitomises the term FUN, without muddling it with obscene amounts of action or comic relief. It shines at being made by and for adults, while being just as fun as a kids cartoon. Goldfinger embodies the Bond style so much, it hasn't been equaled as a Bond movie, as an adults fun movie, even 50 years later. It may never be equaled.
It's an entirely and thoroughly Bond movie, with all the good and the bad to its paroxysm. It's to the point that I can only say this: if you have never watched a classic James Bond, watch Goldfinger. Nothing else matters. Like it or hate it, there is no Bond more Bond.
Bond movies often shine, or do not, due to their main villain. Goldfinger cements that by giving what is still today the best Bond villain by far.
Bond movies often delve into more or less good taste action & romance, that nonetheless are fun at the end of the day. Goldfinger gives us the most, good or bad, but the strongest taste.
Bond movies can and should be this unique mix of fun, action, banter, mind games, sex, death, natural virility and suave charm. Goldfinger gives us the most of that.
It's simply THE Bond movie. It's simply a masterpiece. Even outside of being a Bond fan, it's a gloriously enjoyable, charming, and memorable movie, full of so many great lines, scenes, and moments, that there is no way to forget it. It's a movie of an era, a movie that crowns itself the highest of a very long series, and a movie that influenced cinema perhaps more than any of the movies that will end up on a "100 best movies of all time" lists. Watch it for leisure, watch it for Bond, watch it for its historical value.
Of all the Bonds, Goldfinger is the best, and can stand as a surrogate for the others. If it is not a great film, it is a great entertainment, and contains all the elements of the Bond formula that would work again and again.
This 1964 entry is the most enjoyable of the James Bond thrillers starring Sean Connery—perhaps because it's the most comic and cartoony in look as well as conception. Still, it's every bit as imperialist and misogynistic as the other screen adventures based on Ian Fleming's books.
There's not the least sign of staleness in this third sample of the Bond 007 formula. Some liberties have been taken with Ian Fleming's original novel but without diluting its flavor.
It holds the attention of the audience from brazen start to fantastic finish – well, not quite to the silly end, perhaps, but then we can’t have everything.
What they give us in Goldfinger is an excess of science-fiction fun, a mess of mechanical melodrama, and a minimum of bedroom farce...It is good fun, all right, fast and furious, racing hither and yon about the world as Double-Oh Seven pursues the intrigues of a mysterious financier named Goldfinger.
Goldfinger is probably the best Bond film of all time. It is the third installment of the franchise, with Sean Connery as Bond. The film's plot has Bond investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to contaminate the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. Oddjob, Goldfinger's Korean henchman with the steel-rimmed hat and Bond girl **** Galore are classic characters from this one. There are some timeless scenes in this film, like when a woman is killed with gold spray-paint, or when Bond is placed on a table under an industrial laser and almost killed by Goldfinger. Auric Goldfinger is an iconic villain, with his lust for gold, and gold gimmickry.
It's considered to be one of, if not, the greatest Bond movie, and it's easy to see why. Connery is at his peak here, and the Bond formula is established here, balancing action, espionage, and romance without letting one overstay its welcome. Goldfinger and Oddjob are very unique and memorable villains, not to mention Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" being one of the best title songs of the series. It's definitely the best James Bond movie in my eyes.
Goldfinger is in many ways the first classic James Bond movie. All the tropes that have become synonymous with 007 originated here. Unfortunately, as a result of this tropes being endlessly parodied and done to death by the frachinse, this doesn't hold up as well as Dr. No
(I haven't seen From Russia With Love yet).
While Dr. No is a much slower movie, it's also better shot, better paced, it has a cold blooded Bond and takes itself pretty seriously, kinda like Casino Royale would do decades later.
This movie on the other hand is very goofy. Not as goofy as some future installments, but still pretty goofy. Also, half of it takes place in Kentucky.
Also, Connery's Bond canonically hates The Beatles so **** him. Oh, and he basically **** **** Galore, so that's not good either.
With that said, this is still a good movie. The opening credits are great, Oddjob is a great henchman, the third act is a lot of fun and the "I expect you to die" line is so awesome that it more than makes the whole film worth watching.
Seriously, the entire rest of the movie could have been absolute garbage and I still would've given it a positive review just for that line.
This is the Bond film that established what we have come to expect from the Bond movies for the past 60 years, but it has aged extremely badly with sexism that gave me extreme chest pains. The worst of it was in the main female lead in **** Galore, who's name had me recoiling in disgust. Honestly find From Russia with Love and Thunderball Sean Connery's best Bond films by a wide margin due to being the least sexist and racist of the Connery Bond films.