This Is the Best James Bond Movie

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 25, 9:49AM EDT

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This Is the Best James Bond Movie — © Courtesy of United Artists

Bond, James Bond. He is probably the most famous spy in film history. Perhaps fitting to the secret agent character, 007 has gone through many changes since he was first introduced to movie fans in 1962.

From various actors’ portrayals and a wide range of villains to Bond films fitting the comedy as well as action thriller genres, there is much to love — and little to fix — about the British spy’s franchise.

24/7 Tempo has reviewed all movies in the series and ranked all the James Bond feature films from worst to best using online audience and critic ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Fans of the James Bond franchise suffered a major disappointment when it was announced that the release of the latest movie, “No Time to Die,” had been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The film is now expected to be released in early October.
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Six actors have played James Bond over the years — seven if you consider 1967’s “Casino Royale,” which was a parody Bond movie. Sean Connery, the first Bond, made the character his own and catapulted the franchise to stardom with the release of “Dr. No” in 1962. Connery quit the franchise after seven films over fears of being typecast. The only other actor who played Bond as many times was Roger Moore. The upcoming flick “No Time to Die” will be Daniel Craig’s fifth stint as Bond, and his last.

Fortunately, while enthusiasts wait patiently for the latest installment, several classic Bond movies have been added to streaming services.

The IMDb is an online movie database owned by Amazon, and Rotten Tomatoes is an online movie and TV review aggregator. The index 24/7 Tempo developed is a composite of the movies’ IMDb rating, Rotten Tomatoes audience score and Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score. All ratings were weighted equally. Supplemental data on domestic box office was obtained from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. Data was collected in April 2021.

By these measures, “Goldfinger,” released in 1964, is considered the best James Bond film. Here are the details:

Main cast: Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman
Director: Guy Hamilton
IMDb score: 7.7 out of 10
Tomatometer: 99%
RT audience score: 89%
Worldwide box office: $124.9 million

According to audiences and critics alike, “Goldfinger” is the best Bond movie. First, the characters and actors: Gert Fröbe plays the formidable Goldfinger; Shirley Eaton is the doomed, gold-painted Bond girl Jill Masterson; and Harold Sakata portrays lethal villain Oddjob, who wields a deadly bowler hat. The car: Bond drives the ultra-cool, tricked-out Aston Martin, equipped with a bulletproof shield and machine guns. The plot: Goldfinger plans to contaminate the gold at Fort Knox to boost the value of his own gold supply. The quote: It is in “Goldfinger” that Bond first utters his famous line: “A martini. Shaken, not stirred.”

Click here to see the full ranking of every James Bond movie.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.