Diamonds are Forever

Sean Connery -

James Bond

Jill St. John -

Tiffany Case

Charles Gray -

Ernst Blofeld

Lana Wood -

Plenty O'Toole

Jimmy Dean -

Willard Whyte

Putter Smith -

Mr. Kidd

Bruce Glover -

Mr. Wint

Norman Burton -

Felix Leiter

Bernard Lee -

Desmond Llewelyn -

Lois Maxwell -

Miss Moneypenny

Joe Robinson -

Peter Franks

After Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery said farewell to the James Bond series. Since 1962, Connery had portrayed the secret agent with rugged toughness, a touch of humor and suave sophistication. It was time for him to move on. He was no longer going to put up with the nagging press for its constant hounding. That's precisely what happened in Japan, during the filming of You Only Live Twice. George Lazenby had done an admirable job as Bond, and his film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, remains one of the most popular entries of the series (and my personal favorite). However, the film didn't do as well as Connery's films, so United Artists offered Connery a huge (for the time) amount of money to come back. He did, for one last time, and Diamonds Are Forever is a solid entry in the series.

Bond is understandably upset over the death of his wife at the hands of Blofeld, and he begins a search for his enemy. Blofeld (Charles Gray) has changed considerably. He grew his hair back and is hiring people to alter their appearance to look like him. Bond puts an end to that plan, and after the title sequence, the plot kicks into gear. After chasing after Blofeld and SPECTRE for several years, Bond has a different kind of assignment. His job is to find out who is smuggling diamonds out of South African mines, and for what purpose. The movie introduces two villains early on, Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith) and Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover). Each smuggler in the ring is killed off as he or she delivers the diamonds. In Holland, Bond meets Tiffany Case (Jill St. John), one of the smugglers in the ring. After she gets the diamonds, she is to give them to a Peter Franks (Joe Robinson), but Bond impersonates him to get to Tiffany.

The trail eventually leads to Las Vegas, where most of the movie takes place. It is here that Bond meets the second Bond girl, Plenty O'Toole (Lana Wood), who unfortunately exits the film too soon. Bond goes through his usual amount of investigative techniques, and finally he will discover who is behind the smuggling operation, and the plan for the diamonds comes to light.

Connery portrays Bond much meaner than ever before. He chokes a girl in the beginning, fights off two more girls named Bambi and Thumper, calls Tiffany a bitch and still gets the girl at the end. Even though Bond is more ruthless, he's also more humorous. The series is starting to lean towards being more tongue-in-cheek at this point. The Las Vegas locations are well used, not only in the city, but outside of it as well. There's an amusing chase in the desert in which Bond drives a moon buggy to escape his pursuers. Later, in the streets of Vegas, there's a skilled chase scene involving Bond and the police. There are few gadgets in the film, though Q does show up to try out his new device that causes slot machines to hit jackpots.

Diamonds Are Forever marks the seventh film of the series, and though this is Connery's last appearance in the series, he does appear as James Bond one more time, in 1983's Never Say Never Again, which was produced outside of EON Productions. Looking back at his work, we will notice that Connery's Bond films have been consistently good. George Lazenby doesn't count, because he did only one film, and Roger Moore's tenure of seven films will produce two weak entries. Sean Connery paved the way for the series, and is the most popular and respected James Bond of all, and like all of Bond's missions, there is only one thing to say at the end. Mission accomplished!

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