Wonderful character development!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

With a souped up budget and foreign location this remake of the Anthony Mann noir classic T-Men should have been better. But The File Of The Golden Goose is rather disjointed plot wise and while in T-Men the documentary style narration is critical to the film, here it is used gloss over some glaring holes in the story. That's possibly due to poor editing.Yul Brynner looks like he did this one for a free trip to London where he plays a Secret Service man who is teamed with a Scotland Yard inspector played by Edward Woodward and both are trying to infiltrate a gang of counterfeiters. Brynner has a special reason to get them, they killed his girlfriend Hilary Heath with a bullet meant for him.One of the things that really got me was the very beginning we are shown three murders in different countries including Heath's told that the gang is responsible for them and then never told why these people had to be killed.Brynner slept walked through this one and that attitude won't keep the audience's attention.

U.S. secret service agent YUL BRYNNER is enlisted by Scotland Yard to infiltrate a forgery ring distributing phony U.S. currency in London. He joins a Scotland Yard man EDWARD WOODWARD in this story that appears to be a remake of T-MEN, a thriller from the '40s that starred Dennis O'Keefe in the Brynner role. This version starts in the same terse documentary style as the American film.It's Brynner who decides the best way to capture the mob is to infiltrate them, with Woodward as his back-up, a man with a wife and two children. Brynner is motivated by revenge. His sweetheart was killed in America by men who meant to kill him. Brynner has his misgivings about Woodward. "A married man should be sitting behind a desk shoving papers." He's afraid Woodward won't be a good back-up for him since he refuses to carry a gun.The London backgrounds add flavor to the story, but the script is a cumbersome one, lacking the tension of T-MEN. Dull stretches toward the middle of the story take away from interest for the overall story to have the desired effect. Sam Wanamaker's direction is much too sluggish for this kind of yarn. CHARLES GRAY does a nice job as "The Owl".The storyline is so similar in detail to T-MEN that it's an example of how a 1940s film noir filmed in shadowy B&W can be so superior to this Technicolor remake shifted to London locales but otherwise much the same story, except for some minor changes toward the conclusion.Summing up: Should have generated more suspense. A better editing job would have helped the sluggish pace of a film that is not without a certain amount of intrigue and danger.

A routine,uninspired secret agent thriller.What is not generally acknowledged is that this film is a remake of Anthony Mann's first-class 'B' Film Noir T-MEN(1947).The original had far more resonance and atmosphere(mainly because of Mann's effective direction and John Alton's moody monochrome photography).THE FILE OF THE GOLDEN GOOSE has touristy views of London,flat colour imagery,and unremarkable direction by Sam Wanamaker.Wanamaker,a fine actor,never really made it as a film director,and despite some reputable performers here,like Yul Brynner(in the old Dennis O'Keefe role),and Edward Woodward(in the doomed Alfred Ryder part),the result is a just passable time-waster.

This movie was better than I had expected. The script is not exactly Oscar-caliber, but "Golden Goose" has good actors and an interesting story. The various location shots of London were impressive. Yul Brynner plays a U.S. Secret Service agent trying to bust up a counterfeiting ring.