1964 - Goldfinger
Alternate Title - Goldfingering
PG - 110 minutes
Director - Guy Hamilton
Stars - Sean Connery, Gert Frobe, Honor Blackman
In this installment, Bond is after Goldfinger. In a scene in Miami Beach, Goldfinger is playing cards in a courtyard and cheating. A girl is watching him with a telescope and telling him over a radio what cards the other man has. Goldfinger is using the most obvious wire in the history of wires. It’s like a secret service wire but despite their name they aren’t trying to hide their wires. Bond takes over the radio and tells Goldfinger to lose the game. He does and Goldfinger snaps a pencil. Bond should be scared if this showdown turns into a pencil snapping competition. It should also be noted that Goldfinger looks like a fucking mess. He looks like a bus driver more than a villain.
Bond adds more fuel to the fire inside the shaky mind of Moneypenny when he kisses her on the cheek. She gets a scene in every movie. Seriously, she’s just a fucking secretary and we have to watch her eye-bang Bond for three minutes every couple of years or so.
The next 8 minutes of precious screen time are on a golf course which makes for some gripping cinema. Golf is regarded as one of the most boring sports to watch. Bond movies are regarded as some of the most exciting and action-packed movies to watch. It’s like the Odd Couple of movie scenes. The equivalent would be having a bad-ass car chase scene in the middle of Sophie’s Choice.
After a bunch of sneaking around, Bond is captured and we are given the greatest Bond scene of all time: the laser-crotch showdown. Most of the villain’s capture plans are lame and non-threatening but this one is actually scary to watch as a male. Instead of letting Bond get slowly sliced in half, Goldfinger releases him with this testicles intact. Goldfinger then chauffeurs Bond around the planet like a trophy wife. We then watch as Goldfinger’s house flips around and every surface spins and displays a map or control panel. He reveals his plan which is to gas Fort Knox and steal all of the gold.
Later, Goldfinger, Bond and the lesbian Pussy Galore are all sitting around a table, discussing the plot and sipping drinks as if they haven’t been trying to kill each other the entire movie thus far. Goldfinger’s plan is to destroy all of the gold so that the value of his gold increases tenfold. This plot only works during the gold standard which we have since abandoned. Not to mention that after the theft the United States could have simply abandoned the gold standard on the spot. Goldfinger leaves the scene so Bond and Pussy Galore can walk to a barn for a good fashion raping. Wait, what? Yes, Pussy is clearly a lesbian. In the book she is. In this movie she is. Her name is Pussy for Christ’s sake. Bond whips her around a few times and they semi-kung-fu fight before Bond just flat out rapes her. She says she’s not interested and fights him off for minutes before finally just accepting her fate. What part of this isn’t rape? I didn’t see her as ‘playing hard to get.’ I saw her as a rape victim. But it’s Bond so she goes on with her life.
After Bond foils Goldfinger’s plan, the good guys show up and help. They ask why Pussy called them in and Bond says, “I must have appealed to her maternal instincts.” Yeah, nice try Bond. I know Stockholm Syndrome when I see it.
Overall it’s an awesome Bond movie. Bond literally rapes his way to safety. Goldfinger is an awesome villain despite not looking or acting like one. He has some awesome one-liners and you really believe he means them even though he does what every Bond villain does which is let Bond go every time he gets captured.