"Diamonds are Forever" has oodles of great individual Bondian stunts and comical moments that we have come to expect, though the latter's humor is closer to Roger Moore's more flamboyant Bondian entries than Connery. Guy Hamilton is back as the ace director and things run smoothly if unevenly in "Diamonds are Forever" with an assured and perfectly stylish performance by Sean Connery as 007.
The plot deals with diamonds, of course, lunar modules, deadly laser beams from satellites and a ridiculous moon buggy. There is Charles Gray who has perfect pitch as Blofeld, the archvillain who can't seem to die no matter what James Bond does. These diamonds are priceless yet there are fakes as well. All this leads from London to Holland to finally the center location of most of the action, Las Vegas - one of the few times our superspy ended up in America. With Vegas as the setting, Jill St. John plays Tiffany, a diamond smuggler and Bond's latest love interest. In terms of women populating this world, there are too few. Tiffany is one, a throwaway female known as Plenty (Lana Wood) who is impressed by Bond's super abilities at the craps tables, and the brief introduction of the athletic bodyguards Bambi and Thumper. There is a mob element, an old stand-up comedian (Leonard Barr, an actual comedian), and a Howard Hughes-type known as Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean) presumably living in a hotel. Gadgets are precious few though I did enjoy the voice synthesizer. Oh, did I forget to mention the nifty car chase with Bond driving a red Ford Mustang balanced on two wheels or the oil rig where Bond tries yet again to kill Blofeld? Or how about a waterbed filled with living fish in it?
"Diamonds are Forever" is a bouncy, charming, pure escapist Bond flick but it is not quite at the level of Connery's earlier Bonds. Jill St. John is not quite right as a Bond girl, somehow too giddy and girlish for me to accept. The mid-section of the film slows down a bit during a funeral sequence though the pacing does pick up a bit. So, between the burning coffins and rats in a silo and the psychopathic hit men played rather atypically by Bruce Glover and Putter Smith, there is Connery who delivers a little more tongue-in-cheek attitude than you might expect. You haven't lived deep in 007 land until you have seen Connery pretending to embrace and kiss a woman on the streets.
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