Diamonds Are Forever | | Cast : | Sean Connery, Jill St. John | | Director : | Guy Hamilton | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | December 17, 1971 | | DVD Released Date : | October 17, 2000 | | Language : | French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 25, 2005 | | Summary | BEST BOND EVER! | Content
 | No doubt, the best Bond movie of them all. Great fight scene. Great chase scene around Vegas in a red mustang. And, an action packed ending.
Not to mention the complementary Kidd and Wint who team up to make the best bond villains ever. "Mrs. Whistler did want us to take some pictures of the canals for the children." "How kind of you Mr. Kidd."
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| Rating | | | Date | July 19, 2005 | | Summary | A good Connery one, but not his best. | Content
| I rented Diamonds Are Forever and afterward thought it was okay. I'm glad Connery returned to do one more film as James Bond but he looked really old to me in the movie.
I didn't really care that much for Charles Gray's portrayel of Blofeld. The villian didn't really have a great plot for global domination and wasn't really threatening to Bond. He didn't really portray Blofeld well and will never match Telly Savalas's excellent version of Blofeld.
I liked the Bond Girl Tiffany Case(Jill St.John) and thought she was very funny and pretty. But at the end, she could be really silly at times and sometimes think only about herself. Plenty O' Toole(Lana Wood) was a pretty good Bond Girl but she should have been in the film longer.
I hated the homosexual men and thought it was a stupid idea. They were more of a match to Bond than Blofeld was actually.
All in all, I give this movie a 7/10 and thought it was an okay film for Connery but not his best. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 15, 2005 | | Summary | Classic James Bond! | Content
| I disagree thoroughly with some here who have slated Diamonds Are Forever. I've seen most of the Bond movies and all the Connery ones except for Never Say Never Again (which I understand was not so hot), and "Diamonds" rates easily among my top five favorite Bond flicks.
Other than for the fact that he was a little paunchier than usual, Sean Connery played James Bond just about right. He was realistic rather than bored, gritty and down-to-earth with a commanding on-screen presence. The witty lines were witty and Charles Gray was the most credible, entertaining and three-dimensional Blofeld of all. I don't agree with critics who say he didn't seem menacing enough. He didn't have to seem menacing. He had to BE menacing. To command authority in an evil empire, you have to appeal and reassure, not frighten. I think he understood that.
Donald Pleasance (YOLT) was lame by comparison and Telly Savalas (OHMSS) lacks the supercilious but subtly threatening quality that Gray oozed. Jill St. John played Tiffany Case well (more credibly in fact than the lead lady, Diana Rigg, in OHMSS (who everyone lauds to the skies), and the support cast generally did a fine job.
The actor who was cast as Felix Leighter played his part okay. Why some reviewers think he didn't is possibly because he appears weirdly distant at the airport when he meets Bond, but that's how he's meant to be because Blofeld's men are watching them and they can't let these men see that they know each other. He might have been a little more dramatic, and yet I can imagine Leighter behaving that way in real life.
'Q' was up to his usual tricks, and 'M' was his usual dour and grumpy self.
Guy Hamilton's direction was smooth and slick. The editing (except for a couple of rough edges) was excellent, and the script was easy to follow, engrossing and generally well-written.
The storyline was good. I enjoyed the locations, especially the Vegas scenes and the car chase was superb. The music score was a typically good John Barry effort.
All in all I was well entertained. So what more could I ask for?
I have noticed that those who didn't like Diamonds Are Forever tend to make a lot of comparisons with other Bond efforts, whereas DAF really needs to be regarded differently from the rest to be fully appreciated. It's razamatazz Bond complete with five star luxury hotel scenes, bimbos, gambling and....of course...the smell of money -- more so even than other Bond films. Clearly the director was trying to evoke that glitzy Vegas feel, and in this he succeeded. It's also a fun Bond that refreshingly, and unlike Dr. No or From Russia With Love, doesn't take itself too seriously. If you're looking for deadly serious Bond, DAF won't cut it for you.
Here's another reason why it might have put people off, too. Most viewers being heterosexual, there are bound to have been many who took a dislike to the camp feel about this picture. Mr. Wynt and Mr. Kidd are gay and Blofeld is a cross-dresser, which seems to be a strange and unexplained departure from Ian Fleming's world of Bond, unless the point was to raise cheap laughs at the expense of the gay community. In any case, it backfired badly on the producers because of the negative reviews. But if you can get beyond the camp thing as I have, and take this film in the light-hearted yet entertaining spirit in which it seems to have been made, you should come to the same conclusion that I did that this is one of the best Bond pictures of the franchise. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 14, 2005 | | Summary | Sean Connery was never to old to play Bond! | Content
| I could never get to much Connery, the same goes for Moore, They will never be to old. These guys are the best! |
| Rating | | | Date | April 30, 2005 | | Summary | Diamonds Are Fun | Content
| Firstly, like all of the DVD releases in this series, there are tons of extras and archival materials and it looks great. Secondly, this film was as much an experiment with direction as it was a return to Sean Connery.
By 1971 spies were looking less glamorous and more corrupt by the week. Thank you Richard Nixon. In the mean time, the nature of cinema, especially in the early seventies, was rapidly changing; blockbusters were bombing, smaller personal and political dramas were being made and porno was going mainstream. James Bond might have seemed out of touch with the times (which is reportedly the advice that led George Lazenby to leave the roll). So "Diamonds Are Forever" is a few things; a hugely anticipated return for Sean Connery AND the absolute opposite of the otherwise excellent "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", which came right before it in '69. And, while I agree that there's something a little cheaper about this film (and maybe the first two Roger Moore's as well), it's also a totally fun ride.
I disagree with those who dislike Connery's performance in this. I think it's his most assured of the whole series. He already looked "ponchy" and bored in "You Only Live Twice", here he looks older but seems to be genuinely enjoying himself in the roll he created while also delivering some of the series' wittiest lines. He plays it a bit lighter but it's a lighter film and he's still very much James Bond. "Diamonds" also features a great cast of character actors and John Barry's score strikes and glitters in all the right places.
Now a warning; this film embraces seventies style head on so be prepared to see Bond sporting a short, fat pink tie and, later, a loud plaid blazer. Everyone else follows suit. Roger Moore just looked better in this stuff (and for the Moore haters out there, don't forget Roger is actually OLDER than Connery and he played the roll for over a decade longer!). Anyway, "Diamonds Are Forever" is a very calculated piece of pop art that works 95% of the time. True, it's different than the other Connery films but he handles it with ease and more charm than Pierce Brosnan could ever understand. |
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