1128. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Starring: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray

Director: Guy Hamilton

Running Time: 120 mins

Diamonds Are Forever is a British film and the seventh instalment in the James Bond series. After uncovering a worldwide diamond smuggling plot, Bond travels to Las Vegas, and finds an old enemy in waiting.

After the relative seriousness of George Lazenby’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sean Connery is back with all of the silliness and fun that you loved from the first five films. Only this time, the comedy is turned up to eleven, the action is as mad as can be, and the story is actually decent, making a properly entertaining and massively funny Bond film.

Before we get into why this film is such a riot, however, let’s just have a look at Sean Connery’s return to the series as 007, which isn’t as great as you’d expect. In all honesty, Connery is not the strongest part of this movie like he was in the first five, and although he brings back the beloved maverick Bond, his often flat performance just points to the fact that he’s not quite up to the classic form he originally was.

That said, he’s still a brilliant Bond, and probably the best of all time, and he does still bring a lot of fun to this film. One of the most notable things about Diamonds Are Forever is that it’s almost as much a comedy as a spy thriller.

Gone is the subtle, witty innuendo, and in is a whole host of direct comedic gags deliberately designed to make you laugh, including Bond doing a Dutch accent and saying: ‘Who is your floor?’, two terrifying female henchmen disturbingly named ‘Bambi’ and ‘Thumper’, and 007 talking to a rat for some reason or other.

So, it’s obvious that this is probably one of the craziest films of Sean Connery’s tenure as Bond, and that spills over into the action-packed story too.

There are so many brilliant stunts here, the most notable being 007 driving a Mustang down a Las Vegas alleyway on two wheels, which sums up just what a good sense of humour this film has. Also, the plot, revolving around a diamond-smuggling plot that makes its way to Nevada from South Africa, is full of classically silly thrills and spills, all upping the enjoyability factor of this all the more.

However, where films like Thunderball and You Only Live Twice fell down, Diamonds Are Forever succeeds in making a genuinely interesting and exciting story. This time, Bond doesn’t seem all that invincible, and there are times when you do fear for him, whilst the high stakes, but not so high that they might cause the end of the world high stakes, are pretty thrilling too.

Overall, I’ll give Diamonds Are Forever a 7.9, because despite not being a perfect Bond film, it’s a massively hilarious ride full of great action and a properly decent story to boot.