Diamonds Are Forever

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)

The Mission
After disposing of Blofeld (Charles Gray) once and for all, James Bond (Sean Connery) is called upon to infiltrate and bust up an international diamond smuggling ring after several mysterious murders in South Africa. He follows the trail of dead bodies and missing diamonds to Las Vegas, where Blofeld is alive and well and building a diamond-powered laser satellite that will enable him to extort copious amounts of money from the world's governments.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Sean Connery returns as James Bond to little fanfare. He's visibly aged, with greying temples, and takes an easy stride through his familiar role - either too comfortable or too tired to really push his performance. Bond is ruthless in his pursuit of Blofeld at the film's beginning, presumably because of Tracy's murder in On Her Maesty's Secret Service, though you wouldn't know it as no real references are made to it and Connery resolutely refuses to weigh the character down with angst.

Bond is a bit of a smug know-it-all when it comes to wines and sherries, and he has a reputation amongst crooks as some kind of unkillable superman (see Tiffany's shock when an undercover Bond pretends he has just killed 007). He looks thoroughly unimpressed with Shady Tree's standup routine, and knows his way around a craps table.

Speaking of crap, he gets it kicked out of him by two female thugs. Presumably this is because he's so conceited that their hostility takes him by surprise, or (equally likely) he's not comfortable brawling with women.

Villainy
Blofeld's involvement in this film initially seems to be restricted to the pre-title sequence, though this turns out to be a sleight of hand designed to surprise the audience halfway through the film. In the interim the main villains are Mr Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr Kidd (Putter Smith), a pair of Hale and Pace-like hillbilly hitmen who chuckle like Beavis & Butthead and seem to be gay lovers (I'm not joking about this part, they can be seen holding hands in one scene... it's a little bizarre and feels like a poorly-aimed joke). Glover and Smith deliver all their lines over-emphatically, as if every one of them is a hilarious dark-humoured joke. It probably doesn't help that Putter Smith (a jazz musician) had never acted before and would rarely act again.

Blofeld (in his third and final appearance as Bond's main adversary) is played by Charles Gray this time, who gives the most boring performance of all the Blofelds. The character still wears a nehru-styled suit and has a fluffy white cat, but is no longer bald. He smokes cigarettes in a holder (much like the Penguin from Batman) and (directly contradicting the character in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) says that "Science was never my strong suit". Overall he's very British and affable, and no mention is made of the murder of Bond's wife in the previous film. He also has a rather glitzy office in a building called the Whyte House, disguises himself as a rather ugly lady at one point, and (for once) resists the urge to tell Bond his plan before executing it.

Blofeld's henchmen (besides Mr Wint and Mr Kidd) include Dr. Metz (Joseph Furst), an Einstein-like scientist, and two gymnastic females named Bambi and Thumper.

Buddies and Babes
The main Bond girl for this outing is Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), a member of an American diamond-smuggling ring who teams up with Bond after she realises her life is in danger. She seems fairly capable and on top of her job at first but inexplicably becomes a little ditzy once she turns 'good'. Bond also attracts the attentions of Plenty O'Toole (Lana Wood), a hanger-on at a Vegas casino who gets murdered when Blofeld's men mistake her for Case.

CIA man Felix Leiter (Norman Burton) also makes an appearance as Bond's American liason. By now (after teaming up with Bond in three other films), he's more than familiar with 007's modus operandi and seems rather weary about the whole thing.

M (Bernard Lee) is eager for Bond to get back to his regular spy duties after the Blofeld mission seems tied up. Q (Desmond Llewelyn) meets Bond in the field (Las Vegas) where he takes delight in using a new electromagnetic device to scramble and set off some slot machines.

Locations
Bond's pre-titles pursuit of Blofeld takes him to Japan and Egypt, but these exotic locales are represented by indoor sets most likely filmed in England. Early scenes in the story hint at a South African setting (which, inevitably, would've been better for the film) but 007's mission instead takes him to Amsterdam, Holland (chiefly represented by it's canals) and Las Vegas, America. The Vegas setting brings us casinos, chorus girls, cheap entertainment routines, the circus and the desert.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond has a finger-trap set up in his pocket that severely damages prying hands. He also carries a compact grapping gun that he uses to scale the outside of a skyscraper.

Our favourite agent also disguises himself as a diamond-smuggler named 'Peter Franks', chiefly aided by specially-applied fake fingerprints courtesy of Q. He gets the jump on the real Peter Franks by posing as Dutch elevator-man and speaking in broken English.

Bond also bluffs his way into Blofeld's test base using nothing more than charm and confidence, and even does that trick where you put your arms around yourself and pretend to be making out with someone (I would've thought he was a bit above those sort of primary school shenanigans, but I guess not). He also knows how to flip a car up onto two wheels on one side, which is pretty cool.

Licence to Kill
Bond drowns a man in some kind of medicinal mud dersigned to assist with plastic surgery, and pushes a Blofeld-double into a superheated pool of the same substance. He sticks another Blofeld henchman full of scalpals, throws a diamond smuggler down a stairwell, and kills another Blofeld'-double with a grappling gunshot to the head. Last (but not least), he kills Mr Wint by tying a bomb to him and throwing him into the ocean.

Shag-Rate
For the first time, Bond is seen getting romantic with only woman. Tiffany Case shags him as a means to finding out the whereabouts of some diamonds, patently unaware that James Bond is made of sterner stuff.

Quotes
JAMES BOND: My name is Franks. Peter Franks.

M (to Bond): We do function in your absence, Commander.

JAMES BOND: Anyone seeing you in that outfit Moneypenny would be discouraged from leaving the country.

JAMES BOND: That's a nice little nothing you're almost wearing. I approve.

JAMES BOND (suprised by thugs in his hotel room after bringing a girl back there): I'm afraid you've caught me with more than my hands up.

JAMES BOND (to rat in a concrete pipe): One of us smells like a tart's hankerchief... (he pauses) I think it's me. Sorry about that, old boy.

BLOFELD (considering targets for his new superweapon): If I destroy Kansas the world might not hear about it for years.

How Does It Rate?
Quite easily the worst Bond film of the series yet. The prologue - whilst the first truly 'pumping' action pre-titles sequence to a Bond film - feels like a cheap way to resolve the tragedy of the previous film. No mention is made whatsoever of Bond's dead wife... I understand that this is probably for the good of the film but when you have something as uninspired as Diamonds Are Forever, well, it might've been in their best interests to pursue the shocking ending of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

It doesn't help that the film's budget had to be cut in order to pay Connery's salary either, the climactic oil rig battle is a bit of a fizzer and Bond isn't even seen doing anything particularly heroic in said battle - instead he just messes around with a crane for a bit.

Also, what the hell happened to SPECTRE? This is an organisation that we saw using elaborate training grounds in From Russia With Love and employed a range of dangerous fanatics... now they seem to be faceless goons ruled over by Blofeld, using increasingly ridiculous methods to try and kill Bond and always giving him the chance to escape (witness the scene where he's knocked out and left in a concrete pipe... why wouldn't you just shoot him?!?) The very last scene, featuring an eleventh hour attack from Mr Wint and Mr Kidd (who disappear from the film altogether for an hour once Blofeld shows up) is unneccessarily wacky and ends the film on a rather sour note with one of them incompetently setting himself on fire (Bond doesn't even have to touch him!) whilst the other does a ludicrous somersault into the water after Bond gives him an explosive wedgie.

Overall, poor form - and a very good reason for Connery to end his involvement with the series then and there.

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DIRECTOR: Guy Hamilton
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankkiewicz, based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Charles Gray, Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Jimmy Dean, Bruce Glover, Putter Smith, Norman Burton, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell, Joseph Furst

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Diamonds are Forever by Ian Fleming, the fourth of his James Bonds novels, on which this film is only partially based.
- The idea behind the film was to recreate the success of the earlier American-set James Bond film, Goldfinger.
- Blofeld also appears as the chief villain in You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

AWARDS
Academy Award - nomination Best Sound.