Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | But Connery Isn’t

George Lazenby had signed an 8-film contract when he took on the task of becoming James Bond and was originally going to star in Diamonds Are Forever. However, due to his miserable experience making On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the criticism he faced for not being Sean Connery, he gave up his contract and Sean Connery returned for his new final appearance as the character. Somehow, this would still not be Connery's last appearance as 007, but it would be the last James Bond movie by Eon Productions with him in it. And what a way to go out.

I don't really mean that in the nicest sense either. Diamonds Are Forever is not atrociously bad, by any means. It's also far from the best the franchise has to offer. You Only Live Twice was not the best either, but it was a better send-off for Sean Connery than this one.

Pros

Looming menace of stalking hitmen returns with Mr Wint and Mr Kidd
Great car chase through Las Vegas that further cements the impossibility of James Bond's abilities
Goofy but fun climax
Return of a goofy ear-worm movie theme

Cons

Arbitrarily complicated plot
Underutilized Bond-girls
Too much Jimmy Dean
Back to goofy fist-fights
Blofeld has deteriorated from menacing genius to comical farce of a villain—the body-double nonsense doesn't help anything

Plot & Thoughts

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.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

When it comes to the Sean Connery Bond films, this is close to the bottom of the list for me. I still dislike Thunderball more, but it still had a plot that was coherent with villains and heroes that were more memorable and interesting. Diamonds are Forever is, unfortunately, a somewhat mediocre adventure with a few minor highlights and a plot that is arbitrarily complicated.

Hair of the Dog Bonus Drinking Game Rule

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?