Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
To be honest, I'm not sure I could accurately recount much of this movie or its plot in a meaningful fashion. The plot itself is so overly complicated and loaded with unnecessary fluff that, by the end, it feels like more than half of the movie could have been cut. I'm not sure who's to blame for this sort of decision, but I recall Quantum of Solace having a similar issue where the "real plot" was relatively simple, but getting to that conclusion required a lot of jumping through mental hoops.
To the best of my understanding, a majority of Diamonds Are Forever is about 007 investigating how a diamond smuggling operation might be tied to some bigger, more nefarious purpose. He's to follow the trail to the diamonds and then use them as bait in a sting operation to see who might be involved and where it might lead him. The diamonds are faked, or misplaced, or change hands multiple times. It can get difficult to follow who is on whose side and whether any of it all matters. (SPOILERS) In the end, it just ends up being an evil plot to put diamonds in a satellite that can shoot lasers at specific locations on the globe and hold nations for ransom. Perhaps that revelation of the "ingeniously simple" plot would have been more satisfying had everything leading up to that moment made sense or was interesting. Unfortunately, it's not.
The best thing that Diamonds Are Forever has going for it is the car chase and the return of the looming hitman mechanic that was in From Russia With Love. Bruce Glover and Putter Smith as Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are not nearly as ominous or intimidating as Robert Shaw was as Grant, but their roles are similar in how they provide a small bit of tension or humor to a scene. Diamonds Are Forever would just be a boring, incomprehensible spy film mostly set in Vegas if it didn't have the gimmick of the two goofy assassins.
Credit where credit is due, there are some good Bond moments in the movie. The car chase, as I mentioned, is great: a lot more car carnage than ever before in a Bond film, fewer shots of someone with a blue screen behind them, and some slick driving in classic muscle cars through tight spaces. It has a moment in the chase sequence that nearly defies logic, except that a stunt driver is capable of pulling it off on camera. So we can assume that Bond is just as good at driving as a stunt driver in a movie, right?
But that's about where my praise runs out. The supporting cast is particularly lacking, outside of the assassins. I don't think anyone does a bad job, in terms of acting, but the amount of screen-time allotted to some characters, or just overall importance, seems a bit lopsided. One Bond girl, Plenty O' Toole (Lana Wood), is seen for less than 5 minutes and then quickly exterminated. The primary Bond girl, Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), seems promising enough as a female lead with her own ambitions and hints at her cunning nature. But by the end, she just ends up being a mostly useless, ignorant bystander who gets in the way. This is a sharp drop-off in usefulness from the last four Bond movies where the ladies all served a bigger purpose.
There's also this subplot involving a character by the name of Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean). It ties into the main plot and is part of the big reveal of the true villain of the film (spoilers, it's Blofeld, duh). Whyte doesn't show up until the end of the movie, but when he does show up, he kind of steals the show. I can't decide if I like or dislike Jimmy Dean's hamming up of every scene once he appears. Right now, I'm leaning towards dislike.
Finally, Blofeld, who has gone through his final transformation into Charles Gray (who played a character that died in You Only Live Twice) has just lost all of his intimidating menace and become a joke at this point. It's not Gray's fault, as it has more to do with the fact that the way in which he's dispatched, brought back, and dispatched again in the climax is all just goofy and insulting to the character. Thankfully, this would be the last time (for a long time) that Blofeld would be the central villain in a James Bond movie.
The most memorable thing about Diamonds Are Forever is the the pair of eccentric assassins we see following the trail of diamonds: Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd. Every scene in which they appear comes with an atmosphere of comedic dread. You know they’re up to something and you know that someone is likely to die, but you don’t know if it will happen right away or if they mistakenly chose the wrong victim like Bond and will pay the price. They add a lot of charm to the film, so why not celebrate their appearance with a sip of your beverage?
Not the least of these is the presence of Sean Connery, who was born to the role: dry, unflappable (even while trapped in a coffin at a crematorium), with a mouth that does as many kinds of sly grins as there are lascivious possibilities in the universe. There’s something about his detachment from danger that props up the whole Bond apparatus, insulating it from the total ridiculousness only an inch away.
In “Diamonds Are Forever,” for example, Bond finds himself driving a moon buggy (antennae wildly revolving and robot arms flapping) while being chased across a desert — never mind why. The buggy looks comical, but Connery does not; he is completely at home, as we know by now, with every form of transportation. Later, after outsmarting five Las Vegas squad cars in a lovely chase scene, he nonchalantly flips his Mustang up on two wheels to elude the sixth. But not a sign of a smile. There is an exhilaration in the way he does it, even more than in the stunt itself.
The plot of “Diamonds Are Forever” is as complicated as possible. That’s necessary in order to have somebody left after nine dozen bad guys have been killed. It has been claimed that the plot is too complicated to describe, but I think I could if I wanted to. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. The point in a Bond adventure is the moment, the surface, what’s happening now. The less time wasted on plot, the better.
Although George Lazenby had replaced Sean Connery as James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (d. Peter Hunt, 1969), the poor critical and audience reception of his performance and a personal falling-out with producer Albert R. Broccoli ensured that a different actor would play the lead in Diamonds Are Forever. After Broccoli considered Michael Gambon, John Gavin, Adam West and Roger Moore (who would subsequently begin a 14-year stint as Bond with Live and Let Die two years later), Connery was enticed back after negotiating a then-unprecedented fee of £1.2 million plus perks including the guaranteed funding of two personal film projects (one of which was The Offence, d. Sidney Lumet, 1972). It would be his sixth and final appearance as Bond in the official series.
Strongly and deliberately reminiscent of Goldfinger (1964), which was also directed by Guy Hamilton (Shirley Bassey returned to deliver a John Barry-penned title song), Diamonds Are Forever revolves around a plan to stockpile the world's diamonds for use in a satellite-powered weapon with which supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) plans to hold the world to ransom.
But this plays second fiddle to a larger than usual cast of memorable supporting characters, including arguably the most eccentric hitmen featured in the series, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd (Bruce Glover and Putter Smith) and some genuinely witty lines, courtesy of Bond screenwriting debutant Tom Mankiewicz. As diamond smuggler Tiffany Case, Jill St. John was one of the more impressive Bond girls, though the name everyone remembers is Plenty O'Toole, played by Lana Wood.
Parts of the film were shot in Las Vegas, taking advantage of Broccoli's personal friendship with billionaire Howard Hughes, who gave him the run of several properties that he owned. Vegas was also the location for a spectacular night-time car chase that earned well-merited comparisons with the seminal one in Bullitt (US, 1968). However, the oil rig climax was a disappointment, recognised as such by the filmmakers even at the time - they originally had more ambitious plans for the film's finale which were strangled by red tape.
Diamonds Are Forever was the last 'official' Bond film to feature Blofeld. Although the character clearly still had plenty of mileage, a successful lawsuit from Thunderball co-producer Kevin McClory left him with the rights to the character, subsequently revived in the one-off Connery Bond vehicle Never Say Never Again (US/UK, d. Irvin Kershner, 1983).
To be honest, I'm not sure I could accurately recount much of this movie or its plot in a meaningful fashion. The plot itself is so overly complicated and loaded with unnecessary fluff that, by the end, it feels like more than half of the movie could have been cut. I'm not sure who's to blame for this sort of decision, but I recall Quantum of Solace having a similar issue where the "real plot" was relatively simple, but getting to that conclusion required a lot of jumping through mental hoops.
To the best of my understanding, a majority of Diamonds Are Forever is about 007 investigating how a diamond smuggling operation might be tied to some bigger, more nefarious purpose. He's to follow the trail to the diamonds and then use them as bait in a sting operation to see who might be involved and where it might lead him. The diamonds are faked, or misplaced, or change hands multiple times. It can get difficult to follow who is on whose side and whether any of it all matters. (SPOILERS) In the end, it just ends up being an evil plot to put diamonds in a satellite that can shoot lasers at specific locations on the globe and hold nations for ransom. Perhaps that revelation of the "ingeniously simple" plot would have been more satisfying had everything leading up to that moment made sense or was interesting. Unfortunately, it's not.
The best thing that Diamonds Are Forever has going for it is the car chase and the return of the looming hitman mechanic that was in From Russia With Love. Bruce Glover and Putter Smith as Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are not nearly as ominous or intimidating as Robert Shaw was as Grant, but their roles are similar in how they provide a small bit of tension or humor to a scene. Diamonds Are Forever would just be a boring, incomprehensible spy film mostly set in Vegas if it didn't have the gimmick of the two goofy assassins.
Credit where credit is due, there are some good Bond moments in the movie. The car chase, as I mentioned, is great: a lot more car carnage than ever before in a Bond film, fewer shots of someone with a blue screen behind them, and some slick driving in classic muscle cars through tight spaces. It has a moment in the chase sequence that nearly defies logic, except that a stunt driver is capable of pulling it off on camera. So we can assume that Bond is just as good at driving as a stunt driver in a movie, right?
But that's about where my praise runs out. The supporting cast is particularly lacking, outside of the assassins. I don't think anyone does a bad job, in terms of acting, but the amount of screen-time allotted to some characters, or just overall importance, seems a bit lopsided. One Bond girl, Plenty O' Toole (Lana Wood), is seen for less than 5 minutes and then quickly exterminated. The primary Bond girl, Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), seems promising enough as a female lead with her own ambitions and hints at her cunning nature. But by the end, she just ends up being a mostly useless, ignorant bystander who gets in the way. This is a sharp drop-off in usefulness from the last four Bond movies where the ladies all served a bigger purpose.
There's also this subplot involving a character by the name of Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean). It ties into the main plot and is part of the big reveal of the true villain of the film (spoilers, it's Blofeld, duh). Whyte doesn't show up until the end of the movie, but when he does show up, he kind of steals the show. I can't decide if I like or dislike Jimmy Dean's hamming up of every scene once he appears. Right now, I'm leaning towards dislike.
Finally, Blofeld, who has gone through his final transformation into Charles Gray (who played a character that died in You Only Live Twice) has just lost all of his intimidating menace and become a joke at this point. It's not Gray's fault, as it has more to do with the fact that the way in which he's dispatched, brought back, and dispatched again in the climax is all just goofy and insulting to the character. Thankfully, this would be the last time (for a long time) that Blofeld would be the central villain in a James Bond movie.
The most memorable thing about Diamonds Are Forever is the the pair of eccentric assassins we see following the trail of diamonds: Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd. Every scene in which they appear comes with an atmosphere of comedic dread. You know they’re up to something and you know that someone is likely to die, but you don’t know if it will happen right away or if they mistakenly chose the wrong victim like Bond and will pay the price. They add a lot of charm to the film, so why not celebrate their appearance with a sip of your beverage?
Not the least of these is the presence of Sean Connery, who was born to the role: dry, unflappable (even while trapped in a coffin at a crematorium), with a mouth that does as many kinds of sly grins as there are lascivious possibilities in the universe. There’s something about his detachment from danger that props up the whole Bond apparatus, insulating it from the total ridiculousness only an inch away.
In “Diamonds Are Forever,” for example, Bond finds himself driving a moon buggy (antennae wildly revolving and robot arms flapping) while being chased across a desert — never mind why. The buggy looks comical, but Connery does not; he is completely at home, as we know by now, with every form of transportation. Later, after outsmarting five Las Vegas squad cars in a lovely chase scene, he nonchalantly flips his Mustang up on two wheels to elude the sixth. But not a sign of a smile. There is an exhilaration in the way he does it, even more than in the stunt itself.
The plot of “Diamonds Are Forever” is as complicated as possible. That’s necessary in order to have somebody left after nine dozen bad guys have been killed. It has been claimed that the plot is too complicated to describe, but I think I could if I wanted to. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. The point in a Bond adventure is the moment, the surface, what’s happening now. The less time wasted on plot, the better.
Although George Lazenby had replaced Sean Connery as James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (d. Peter Hunt, 1969), the poor critical and audience reception of his performance and a personal falling-out with producer Albert R. Broccoli ensured that a different actor would play the lead in Diamonds Are Forever. After Broccoli considered Michael Gambon, John Gavin, Adam West and Roger Moore (who would subsequently begin a 14-year stint as Bond with Live and Let Die two years later), Connery was enticed back after negotiating a then-unprecedented fee of £1.2 million plus perks including the guaranteed funding of two personal film projects (one of which was The Offence, d. Sidney Lumet, 1972). It would be his sixth and final appearance as Bond in the official series.
Strongly and deliberately reminiscent of Goldfinger (1964), which was also directed by Guy Hamilton (Shirley Bassey returned to deliver a John Barry-penned title song), Diamonds Are Forever revolves around a plan to stockpile the world's diamonds for use in a satellite-powered weapon with which supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) plans to hold the world to ransom.
But this plays second fiddle to a larger than usual cast of memorable supporting characters, including arguably the most eccentric hitmen featured in the series, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd (Bruce Glover and Putter Smith) and some genuinely witty lines, courtesy of Bond screenwriting debutant Tom Mankiewicz. As diamond smuggler Tiffany Case, Jill St. John was one of the more impressive Bond girls, though the name everyone remembers is Plenty O'Toole, played by Lana Wood.
Parts of the film were shot in Las Vegas, taking advantage of Broccoli's personal friendship with billionaire Howard Hughes, who gave him the run of several properties that he owned. Vegas was also the location for a spectacular night-time car chase that earned well-merited comparisons with the seminal one in Bullitt (US, 1968). However, the oil rig climax was a disappointment, recognised as such by the filmmakers even at the time - they originally had more ambitious plans for the film's finale which were strangled by red tape.
Diamonds Are Forever was the last 'official' Bond film to feature Blofeld. Although the character clearly still had plenty of mileage, a successful lawsuit from Thunderball co-producer Kevin McClory left him with the rights to the character, subsequently revived in the one-off Connery Bond vehicle Never Say Never Again (US/UK, d. Irvin Kershner, 1983).
