June 26th, 2012 
Dane Sager 
What The Film?! is a weekly column exclusive to Under The Gun Review that brings to light the plot holes Hollywood hoped you’d never notice. Written by comedy writer Dane Sager, this column shows no mercy to films that try and pull the proverbial wool over our eyes.
If you know a film with major plot holes that you feel needs to be exposed, tell us! Email utgjames@gmail.com with the subject “What The Film” and we’ll try to get your suggestion featured on the site.
This Week’s Movie: 1964’s Goldfinger
Goldfinger is one of the best James Bond movies ever made. It was the third James Bond movie after 1962’s Dr No and 1963’s From Russia With love and was the movie that cemented James Bond into a film icon. Nearly every single James Bond cliché that’s been used in the following twenty movies started in Goldfinger. You want iconic villains (with ridiculous names)? You get Oddjob, Pussy Galore, and possibly the most famous Bond villain ever, Auric Goldfinger. You want action with random pieces of absurdity? You have James Bond sneaking into a drug laboratory with a fake duck on his head. You want cars? This is the first James Bond movie to feature an Aston Martin, the most iconic of the James Bond vehicles. You want a secret agent making puns and jokes after murdering someone because he’s clearly gone insane from killing so many people? You have James Bond throwing a heating lamp into a bathtub, electrocuting the assassin who unfortunately found his way into the water. The water turns red from what we assume is the assassin’s own blood exiting his body in this excruciatingly painful situation. Bond casually puts on his jacket and says “Shocking” as if his convulsions weren’t the most horrible thing he’s ever seen.
You want exotic locations? You get Kentucky. You can't win them all.
So what’s Goldfinger about? In the book and movie Bond is sent to monitor Gold seller Goldfinger (and Auric means gold too, so there’s that) to figure out how he manages to smuggle gold in and out of countries where he’d normally be taxed for doing so. As it turns out, Goldfinger melts the gold down and puts it inside his car’s frame and paneling, passing off its unusual weight for being “armored”. This way he can drive from country to country and not raise suspicion.
He kept trying to smuggle it through women but they kept, you know, dying.
In the process of investigating Goldfinger, bond overhears him mention something about “Operation Grand Slam”. Unlike most people seeing Goldfinger’s large figure, Bond doesn’t assume he was passionately discussing his breakfast plans and decides to investigate further.
Bond ends up hearing Goldfinger discuss the full details of Operation Grand Slam to a room full of mafiosi. Goldfinger owes each of the ten to fifteen people in the room a million dollars each and tells them that he can pay them all the million now, or that he can pay them ten million tomorrow, provided they help him steal all the gold out of Fort Knox, which is where America then stored its entire gold reserve. After Goldfinger explains his plan in excruciating detail. much hurrah and arguments, one mobster decides to take his million and not be a part of the plan. Goldfinger decides to respect this decision and lets him leave. His assistant Oddjob takes the million dollars and the criminal in a personal car to a trashyard and kills him.
Here we see Oddjob showing off how he does squats to Bond and Goldfinger.
That’s not a problem at all. Countless James Bond movies have a sequence where the villain explains the plan to a group of people and kills the one who inevitably says no under the guise of letting them walk away. There’s a page dedicated to this on TV Tropes (don’t go to that website unless you have a few hours free to lose). The issue is that once the guy with the common sense who knows not to attack America at its wallet gets killed, the rest of the investors are pacing around with Goldfinger wondering how they can help out on this plan.
And then Goldfinger kills them all. Why? He had nothing to gain from it and nothing to lose from not killing them. Even if Goldfinger had a reason to kill every single member, why did he explain the entire plan to them in great detail? This scene existed purely for the reason that James needed to figure out what Goldfinger was up to and this was shoehorned into it. It doesn’t make any sense and is almost like Goldfinger does a lot of things just to waste time for funzies.
“I also enjoy mint juleps”
This year is the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise with its 22nd sequel Skyfall releasing this November. It’s the longest running film franchise for good reason. I’ve done What The Film?! on two James movies prior (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Die Another Day) it’s not because they’re bad movies (well, maybe Die Another Day), it’s because they’re great movies. Even when they’re at their worst and not really making sense, they’re still a lot of fun. I’ve been waiting on Skyfall for four years now and my excitement hasn’t died down at all.
And yet I still haven't done Moonraker yet!
What The Film?! will return in The Batman Franchise Part 1 of 3. You can follow Dane on Twitter and Tumblr!
- What The Film!? – Diamonds Are Forever - July 8, 2013
- What The Film!? – Independence Day - July 1, 2013
- What The Film!? – Armageddon - June 24, 2013
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