Goldfinger – 1964 | 112mins | Action, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

While Bond (Sean Connery) is on holiday, M (Bernard Lee) asks him to look into the activities of the millionaire industrialist and gambler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe). Bond discovers that Goldfinger cheats at cards and a golf, and discovers that the CIA, in the shape of his old friend Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) – are interested in the man. Bond tracks Goldfinger to Switzerland, where late one night he sneaks into a factory belonging to Goldfinger and discovers Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce being melted down. Its bodywork is fabricated from eighteen-carat gold, and if Goldfinger makes six such trips a year he must be making a hefty profit out of smuggling.

Attempting to escape with this information, Bond is captured by Goldfinger and taken to Kentucky, USA, where Bond overhears Goldfinger explaining to a group of American hoodlums that he intends robbing Fort Knox. Each of the hoodlums has provided something – nerve gas, manpower, a laser cutter – expect a hefty return on their investment. Instead, Goldfinger kills the hoodlums and reveals to Bond that he is being paid by the Red Chinese to detonate a nuclear device in Fort Knox in order to irradiate the entire gold supply of the USA. Cue economic chaos and the sudden increase in value of Goldfinger’s gold reserves. Goldfinger uses Pussy Galore’s (Honor Blackman) Flying Circus of female pilots to spread what he thinks is nerve gas across the Fort Knox military base. But Bond has managed to subvert Pussy Galore and get a message out to Felix Leiter: the nerve gas has been replaced with something harmless and the troops who fall over as if dead are actually faking.

Goldfinger’s people invade Fort Knox and bum their way into the vault. Goldfinger has an atomic bomb wheeled into the gold reserve and chains Bond to it. The ‘dead’ troops attack, and manage to disrupt Goldfinger’s operation, but Goldfinger activates the bomb and escapes in the uniform of a US General, killing his Chinese liaison as he goes. Bond attempts to defuse the bomb, fighting off and killing Goldfinger’s henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) while he does so. In the end, an expert disarms the bomb. On his way to meet the President of the USA, Bond is hijacked by Goldfinger but manages to kill him in a scuffle.