Summary
As Goldfinger's men begin shooting at them, Bond and Tilly run into the woods. Some of the men spot them, but Bond knocks one of them out and they hop into the car just in time, driving away. As they drive, they are pursued by Goldfinger's Chinese associates, and they begin shooting at the car. With the press of a button, Bond sends a bunch of smoke into the car's wake, causing their pursuers to crash.
Another car catches up to them and keeps shooting, but Bond presses yet another button that leaves a trail of oil behind them. The pursuers skid off the road and over a cliff, their car exploding into flames and crashing into Goldfinger's warehouse. But just when they think they've outrun their enemies, yet another car appears behind them.
Bond stops the car and hops out to begin shooting at the enemy. After starting a massive shootout, Bond instructs Tilly to make a run for it, but Goldfinger's caddy, Oddjob, throws his bladed bowler hat at her, instantly killing her. As Bond goes to examine her dead body, Oddjob and the others come up behind and apprehend him, taking him back to Goldfinger's lair.
On the way back, they honk their horn and an older Swiss woman manually opens the gate for them. Seizing an opportunity, Bond ejects the Chinese man who is riding with him from the passenger seat, and drives away. The older woman shoots at him with a machine gun, making bullet holes in his windshield as he drives back into the warehouse, speeding around corners until suddenly he accidentally drives into a wall, knocking him unconscious.
Later, Bond wakes up tied to a table in Goldfinger's laboratory. The lights come on and Goldfinger greets him as "007." Laughing, Goldfinger points out that Bond is lying underneath a laser "which emits an extraordinary light not to be found in nature." He then demonstrates the power of the laser, shooting it at the table Bond is sitting on and threatening to cut him in half with it. Bond tries to reason with him that he will just be replaced if Goldfinger kills him, but this doesn't work. He then tells Goldfinger that he knows about "Operation Grand Slam," something Goldfinger mentioned in the warehouse, and that he told agent 008. This gets Goldfinger's attention and he decides that he ought to keep Bond alive, turning off the laser just as it is about to reach Bond's crotch. An assistant walks up to Bond and shoots him with a tranquilizing dart.
When Bond awakens a second time, a beautiful woman is standing nearby, who introduces herself as Pussy Galore. "I thought I'd wake up dead," he says, and Pussy shows him the tranquilizer gun that shot him. Pussy tells him they're in a plane at 35,000 feet flying southwest over Newfoundland. A woman named Mei-Lei asks Bond if he wants a drink and he orders a martini, "shaken not stirred." Pussy tells Bond she's Goldfinger's personal pilot, and that Goldfinger has already flown ahead of them. As he sips his martini, he toasts to Operation Grand Slam, and Pussy tells him she's immune to his charm.
When Pussy announces that they will be landing in Baltimore soon, Bond asks Mei-Lei for his luggage, but his attache case is missing. In a small chamber, Bond changes clothes, but Pussy tells Mei-Lei to keep an eye on him. Looking at a clock on the wall of the chamber, Bond notices Mei-Lei watching him, and moves to the side out of sight, before hanging a coat up over the hatch. Mei-Lei looks through another hole in the wall, but Bond covers that also, before taking out a tracking device and slipping it in his shoe. He shaves, smirking.
Emerging from the chamber in a suit, Bond finds Pussy pointing a gun at him. Bond notes that if Pussy shoots the gun she's holding, it will go through both Bond and the plane, causing a crash, so she must not intend to fire it.
M. gets a call from Felix in Washington, who tells him that Bond's signal has been picked up in Baltimore on a private jet of Goldfinger's. Felix tells M. that the plane's final destination is Kentucky, but M. advises him not to send in any reinforcement, as it seems that Bond is "evidently well on top at the moment."
The plane lands at "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus." Bond emerges from the plane at the airport and tries to help Pussy off the plane, but she tells him to keep playing it easy. He begins to ask her out on a date, when suddenly he sees Oddjob, who ushers him into a car. As a group of planes lands, beautiful women emerge and slinky saxophone music plays. The women pilots run towards Pussy and she dismisses them.
Analysis
We're starting to see a pattern: whenever Bond makes the acquaintance of a woman whom he might be able to trust, she is killed soon after. This first occurred with Jill, a fling that seemed affectionate until she was suffocated by Goldfinger's assistant, Oddjob. Then, it is repeated with Jill's sister, Tilly, who seems like she might be able to help Bond, until she is killed by a swift fling of Oddjob's blade-encrusted bowler hat. The pattern that emerges is one in which one minute Bond has an ally, and the next minute, he finds himself alone, without a friend in the world.
Such is the life of a competent and danger-seeking spy. Indeed, James Bond shares many attributes with a classic film noir hero, yet without the grizzled pathos of a Humphrey Bogart character. Rather than playing a detective plagued by doubts and psychological fears, James Bond is a light-hearted, easy breezy hero with a knack for making the right decision under pressure. Thus, he represents a hero who is emblematic of the swinging sixties, less haunted than the post-war heroes of film noir. He knows how to be rough, but ultimately Bond is a softie, who wants nothing more than to curl up in bed with a beautiful woman and a glass of Dom Perignon.
Bond's ability to get out of a difficult situation in a pinch is made all the more suspenseful when he is strapped to a table in Goldfinger's lab with a fiery laser moving rapidly towards his crotch to cut him in two. This image is especially evocative, as we know that Bond is a man of considerable libido, but he manages to get under Goldfinger's skin just before the laser reaches his valuables. No matter the difficulty, James Bond knows exactly how to survive.
At Goldfinger's laboratory, we meet one of the more comically named James Bond femme fatales in film history: Pussy Galore. Pussy appears to be the next woman likely to fall prey to Bond's irresistible charms, but she is considerably less impressionable, and insists that he can stop using his charms as she is "immune" to them. This is the first time in the film that a woman has not been portrayed as easily swayed by Bond and his masculinity, and instead maintains a formidable self-possession around the spy's raffish temperament.
Instead of sending reinforcements to help Bond, M. and Felix interpret the fact that Bond is on Goldfinger's plane as evidence of the fact that he's doing well and not in danger. In this film, Bond is able to elude danger and fall back into it very quickly. One minute he's up, having a drink and evading the watchful eye of his enemy, and the next he's strapped to a table or being held at gunpoint. The way that he toes the line is part of his skill as a spy, and his bosses know this, so they decide to leave him alone while he's on the job.
