Summary
When Bond suggests that it will be logistically impossible to steal the gold, Goldfinger counters that he in fact isn't planning on removing the gold, but on detonating a nuclear bomb at the site that will render the entire gold supply of the United States radioactive for 58 years. With the help of the Chinese, Bond surmises, Goldfinger will destabilize the economy in the West and increase the value of his own gold 10 times.
Bond notes that the nuclear device must already be in the United States, and that bringing it to Fort Knox must be risky. "On the contrary, Mr. Bond, the risk is all on your side," Goldfinger says, smiling. Goldfinger threatens that the bomb will be detonated randomly, should anyone apprehend it before it reaches Fort Knox. He then says, nefariously, "Operation Grand Slam will be a success. You will see for yourself—too closely for comfort, I'm afraid."
Just then, Oddjob pulls up with the compacted car in the back. Bond looks dismayed as he realizes that Solo has been killed, and Goldfinger goes to retrieve his gold from the compacted car. Pussy Galore comes out wearing a new, more seductive outfit, and Goldfinger tells them to spend some time together, and that he will join later.
"Well, the new Miss Galore. Where do you hide your knuckles in this outfit?" Bond asks as they walk on the grounds. From afar, Felix and his associate see Bond walking with Pussy through their binoculars, and Felix smiles, saying, "That's my James." As they walk, Bond comments on the beauty of the farm and mentions that it all has to end tomorrow; "He's quite mad, you know," Bond says to a confused-looking Pussy. He leads Pussy into a stable, and Felix and his associate decide that Bond has things under control, and leave.
In the stable, Bond tries to get Pussy to join his side, but she insists that it would take "a lot more than [he's] got." He pulls her towards him, when suddenly she flips him onto the ground. She then falls to the ground and the two of them engage in a struggle, eventually ending up on the ground. Climbing on top of her, Bond kisses Pussy, and while she struggles for a moment, she eventually kisses him back.
Later, Pussy gives orders to her flying circus, and the planes take off for the mission. The planes begin diving towards Fort Knox and one of the pilots gives the order to spray the nerve gas on the premises. We see people on the ground collapsing from the gas. "The baby is asleep," reports one of the pilots, smiling, and the planes head back to Goldfinger's farm.
Goldfinger's men drive into Fort Knox wearing gas masks. They pass the groups of dead soldiers—in one car, Felix is passed out in the backseat—and approach the main building where the gold is kept. At the gate, the men, including Oddjob and Bond, get out of the cars. Some of Goldfinger's minions set up dynamite at the gate, blowing it up and driving right into the driveway of the depository. After the men remove the door of the depository using a laser, Goldfinger arrives in a helicopter flown by Pussy Galore.
They open the vault and assemble the nuclear device, setting a timer for over 300 seconds. Suddenly, the scene shifts and we see Felix, his associate, and a group of military personnel and policemen waking up—apparently, they were only faking their unconsciousness. "The bomb's here," says Felix, and they get moving towards the depository. All of the soldiers wake up, apparently having faked their unconsciousness, and prepare to neutralize the bomb.
Inside the vault, Goldfinger has Bond handcuffed to the bomb and says his goodbyes to the spy. Outside, the American soldiers fall upon Goldfinger's men and a shootout begins. Frightened, Goldfinger runs into a control booth, puts on an American military disguise, and closes the vault. He then takes a golden pistol and begins to shoot his own men, pretending to be on the side of the Americans. When the Americans trust his disguise, he shoots them and makes a run for it.
Oddjob and another of Goldfinger's men have been locked in the vault and try and find a way to get out. After a struggle, Oddjob throws the man from a great height, and Bond, who is still handcuffed to the bomb, drags himself over to the dead man so that he can steal the keys to the handcuff from the man's breast pocket. As Bond unlocks the handcuffs, Oddjob throws his blade-brimmed bowler hat at him, but misses Bond. Bond eventually unlocks his handcuffs and makes a run for it. When Oddjob throws his hat at Bond again, it hits a wire in the corner, which begins to spark.
Bond throws a brick of gold at Oddjob's chest, but it simply bounces off. With only 200 seconds until the bomb is detonated, Bond picks up a large metal pole and tries to fight Oddjob, but Oddjob is a formidable foe and throws him around. Eventually, Bond finds Oddjob's bowler hat and throws it at the evil assistant, but he misses. As Oddjob goes to retrieve the hat, Bond picks up the sparking wire and points it at the row of pipes that Oddjob is touching, electrocuting the assassin instantly.
Bond runs over to the container holding the bomb with only a minute left and attempts to open it. Outside, someone opens the vault and some of Goldfinger's men and American soldiers rush in, just as Bond manages to open the container. Bond stares at the wires, mystified, as Felix and the others come into the vault. With only 7 seconds left, a man rushes over and switches off the bomb.
"Did you get him?" Bond asks, and Felix tells him Goldfinger hasn't gotten far. Felix then tells Bond that Pussy called Washington offering to help with the plan and switch out the gas with something non-toxic. Bond is surprised to hear that Pussy helped with the plan, saying, "I must have appealed to her maternal instincts."
Bond is put in a private jet set for Washington, slated to meet the president. When the plane is in the air, Goldfinger emerges from the back of the plane with a golden pistol. "I'm glad to have you aboard, Mr. Bond," he says, telling Bond that he is set to be in Cuba in 2 hours. "It's very dangerous to fire guns in planes," Bond tells Goldfinger smugly. When Goldfinger tells Bond that Pussy is in the cockpit, Bond seizes his chance and wrestles the gun out of Goldfinger's hand, but it accidentally goes off, bursting a window. Goldfinger is sucked out of the window, but Bond holds on for dear life as Pussy tries to right the plane's course.
As the plane descends, the air pressure goes down and Bond falls onto a couch in the plane. He then bursts into the cockpit, where he finds Pussy trying to land the plane. "It's no good!" she says, as the plane plummets towards the ocean in a fiery blaze.
We see Felix in a helicopter looking for Bond. Pussy Galore is on the ground below and she waves up to him, before collapsing onto the grass, embracing and kissing Bond.
Analysis
At the heart of Goldfinger's "Operation Grand Slam" is not only greed and a taste for the perfect crime, but a broader sociopolitical project. Goldfinger's plot is not only him against Fort Knox, but the East against the West. With the help of his Chinese associates, Goldfinger, an Eastern European, plans to detonate a bomb that will render U.S. gold useless for 58 years, and destabilize the Western economy. Goldfinger's plot, then, is simply an extension of the struggles of the mid-century Cold War. The way that the audience is meant to fear Goldfinger's effort to create chaos in the United States bears a resemblance to American fear of Communism and the nuclear bomb in the mid-20th century.
While James Bond films represented a loosening moral code in the swinging 1960s with its more relaxed and lighthearted attitude toward sex and style, it also represented a markedly conservative political perspective. In Goldfinger the villains are foreigners and deviants, and their villainousness is heightened by their non-normativity. Goldfinger, a Latvian man, is in cahoots with Asian associates, all of whom are portrayed to be moral deviants invested in a project of Western demise. Additionally, Goldfinger's personal pilot, Pussy Galore, is implied to be a lesbian, and lesbianism is by extension implied to have a connection to amorality, greed, and an immunity to all of the wholesome and irresistible masculine attributes that James Bond represents. Pussy's resistance to Bond's charms becomes a part of her evil, an active threat to the spy who is used to heterosexuality being one of his most foolproof tools. In Goldfinger, homosexuality, non-whiteness, foreignness, and political untrustworthiness are conflated to create a specter of elusive and particularly unsavory villainy.
Pussy Galore's imperviousness to Bond's charms is exploited in this section of the film more explicitly, as she seduces him in an effort to distract him from his work, and ends up fighting with him in the barn. Where Bond's charms would usually weaken and distract the woman he is interacting with, he and Pussy engage in a battle of will that escalates into a physical struggle in the horse barn and a nonconsensual kiss that Bond forces onto his lesbian-leaning foe. While it is unclear what Pussy's feeling about the kiss is, she succumbs.
The scale of violence is shocking in this final section of the film. We see Pussy Galore's fleet of beautiful blonde pilots diving their planes near Fort Knox and releasing the Delta 9 on the premises. While Goldfinger said that the nerve gas only knocked people out for 24 hours, Bond notes later that the gas actually kills its victims. As the pilots release the gas, we watch as crowds of people fall to the ground, instantly dead (at least, so it seems) from the spray. These shots are terrifying images of biological warfare, and the ease with which Goldfinger's minions carry out these violent acts makes them all the more horrifying.
Earlier in the film, Pussy Galore noted that James Bond likes a "close shave," referring to his male grooming habits. Her comment, of course, has a double meaning, as James Bond consistently finds himself in high-stakes ordeals in which the odds seem stacked against him. This is especially true at the end, when he is literally trapped inside the vault at the United States depository, physically attached to a nuclear bomb and avoiding the wrath of a deadly assassin. Even after, when he is on a plane headed for the White House for a meeting with the president, danger emerges when Goldfinger comes out of the back with a gun, and eventually the plane crashes in a fiery blaze. Miraculously enough, Bond manages to win out, and even manages to convert the lesbian Pussy into a heterosexual woman. Of all the action-packed implausibilities, this last accomplishment is perhaps his most improbable.
