Goldfinger

Goldfinger (1964) is the third Bond and the one that set the template the series still runs on. Auric Goldfinger smuggles gold. Bond is assigned to watch him and learns the plan is not to steal the gold in Fort Knox but to irradiate it, multiplying the value of his own stock. For a heist film the idea is unusually economic. Things that appear here for the first time: the equipped Aston Martin DB5, a self contained action sequence before the titles, a credit song written for the film, and the villain explaining his plan to Bond in detail. The laser scene is the best tension in the series and contains no punches at all. Gert Fröbe, who plays Goldfinger, was German and did not speak English. He delivered his lines phonetically and his entire voice was dubbed afterwards by the English actor Michael Collins. So the voice saying the film's most famous line does not belong to the man on screen. The gold painted woman produced an urban legend that the actress died of it. Shirley Eaton did not die, and there is no such thing as suffocating through the skin. Guy Hamilton directed. Parts of it belong to their period and are uncomfortable now. It runs 110 minutes. Good for: Bond, the sixties, and espionage. Less good for: the female characters are written in the manner of their time and the pace is slow next to current action.