Dr. No and From Russia with Love may have come before it, but Goldfinger feels like the first true Bond film, finally perfecting the formula that the series has been repeating ever since. It is not exactly a great film in the conventional sense, and it is arguably not even the greatest Bond film, but it is supreme entertainment and the most perfect, and most efficient, distillation of the famous formula. This even extends to Bond himself, with his key character traits—sexual predator, suave sophisticate and quipping death machine—coming into sharper focus than ever before. 

The most impressive, and enjoyable, feature of Goldfinger is that it manages to be both utterly ridiculous and unimaginably cool without ever breaking the surface tension. For all their unlikelihood, Auric Goldfinger—the archetypal talking villain who might have got away with it if he could have resisted the urge to show off his overdesigned base and absurd plan with the most over-the-top presentation I have ever seen—and his iconic henchmen, Oddjob and Pussy Galore, feel like a genuine threat to Bond, and the film benefits from some memorable physical, verbal and, yes, sexual confrontations. No current film would get away with some of this stuff, and rightly so, but it is a perfect encapsulation of the swinging sixties.

Whether it is Jill Masterson smothered in gold paint, Bond’s pimped-out Aston Martin, Oddjob tossing around his razor-brimmed hat or the nuclear countdown being stopped at 007, Goldfinger is surely the most iconic Bond film, and it saw the introduction of the now signature cold opening, theme song and Q department gadget showcase. It is the essential Bond film and proves that, when it comes to spy movies, nobody does it better.