This review of Diamonds Are Forever (1971) is part of a wider rewatch of the James Bond series to mark its 60th anniversary. 007 has always been my favourite movie franchise, and I wanted to see where each film ranks within the series. Please check out the main blog post for my rankings of this and the other twenty-four official films and links to the movie reviews for the rest of the franchise.
Long Review and Film Summary
Like most of the earlier films, I’ve only seen parts of it in the past, and the headline is that I enjoyed it. Sean Connery is back for his sixth and final EON Productions Bond movie, he was paid $1.2 million of the $7 million budget to return. The opening seems to try and ignore that OHMSS and George Lazenby ever happened, we meet 007 on the trial of Blofeld (played by Charles Gray) and find his cloning operation to try and evade assassination, which he seemingly fails as Bond sends him into the hot mud bath. M (played by Bernard Lee), 007 and diamond expert Sir Donald Munger (played by Laurence Naismith) discuss the recent smuggling of Diamonds. During this scene, we see the path of smuggling and meet the excellent characters of Mr Wint (played by Bruce Glover) and Mr Kidd (played by Putter Smith), who are working for Blofeld to interpret the smuggled diamonds as they pick off each of the mules in turn. Later, we find out Blofeld has kidnapped and is impersonating entrepreneur Willard Whyte (played by Jimmy Dean) to use his satellite and the stolen diamonds to take out the missiles in multiple countries. The end goal is to sell the capability of nuclear supremacy to the highest bidder. Some of the key moments that stand out in this movie is the way everyone plays the cremation scene, even though they all know it’s all about the diamonds, yet they play it so straight.
The fight scene in a small moving elevator between 007 and Peter Franks (played by Joe Robinson). Plenty O’Toole (played by Lana Wood) is thrown from a hotel room window and lands in the pool. The car chase with the Las Vegas Police, where Bond takes out half a dozen squad cars in the process of driving around a parking lot, even if the swapping of the side of the car the wheels are on when going through the tight alleyway is kinda silly. A couple of things that let this film down for me are the very small amount of Q (played by Desmond Llewelyn) in it. The fact that toward the end of the movie Bond only knows that the satellite is being controlled from an oil rig because it’s on a map of Willard Whyte’s company locations, and he doesn’t recognise it. This means Blofeld has gone to the trouble of creating a model oil rig and has put it on the map for some reason, which I find hard to believe. Tiffany Case (played by Jill St. John) seems to be just along for the ride, she’s not given much to do bar sitting, laying down, being passed from Bond to Blofeld and “helping” with the satellite control tape towards the end, I feel like the character deserved to more integral to the plot seems kind of a waste. Finally, Bond driving the Moon Buggy out of the Moon Landing studio (which I don’t understand why there’s even there) and across the desert is also very silly. All things considered, this Bond film is one I’d be happy to sit down and watch on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a funny, interesting, and well-put-together film with an iconic title song by Shirley Bassey.