After Roger Moore's very disappointing initial outings in the role of James Bond, the producers of the films resorted to sheer over-the-top spectacle to sell their product. It is a measure of their commitment to high-quality stunt work that Moore's extremely silly final film is nevertheless something of a guilty pleasure. Please don't misinterpret my remarks as implying that A View To A Kill is a good film. It most definitely is not, but one or two interesting stunt sequences and a passable turn by Christopher Walken as the villainous Zorin at least make it relatively painless to watch. And kudos to Roger Moore here as well because, unlike Connery in his last Eon appearance, Moore actually showed up on the set with an intention to act. Moore may in fact have been born to play the role of upper-class British twit and, when Bond is forced to assume such a role as cover in the film, he is actually quite funny. A View To A Kill, except for one truly appalling lack of judgment at the end of the film, is really just harmless fluff. I find it to be a perfect exemplar of the half-a-brain video rental; the type of film that you can rent and watch in spells while simultaneously balancing the checkbook.
Lest you think the fact that I'm praising this movie implies that I've gone mad, let me stress that I'm doing so just to bolster my argument that this film is not the absolute worst the franchise has produced. As ridiculous as the movie is in so many ways, it still retains a modicum of rewatchability that the films we've discussed so far do not. Unfortunately, watching this movie with an eye to other matters is not only a possibility but also an outright necessity. If one devotes his full attention to the movie, he will find that time and time again the film squanders any good will that it has earned by impressive stunt work by immediately following it up with the goofiest and most haphazard possible segues into subsequent scenes. Female leads in this picture, while not totally unpleasant, are at best mere vehicles for plot exposition and at worst tacked on additions that serve only to pad the run time. While I can't pretend to know what the producers were thinking at the time, I still maintain that the theory I sketched below for Diamonds Are Forever goes a long way towards explaining the extremely poor scripting in this film as well. Give Moore credit for common sense: he had realized that he was growing far too old to continue as Bond and was ready to bow out. I think the producers, understandably reluctant to undertake the search for a new Bond, were desperate to get something - anything! - to the screen in an effort to put off the day of reckoning. After begging Moore for one more appearance, the producers cobbled together a movie that can be regarded as a mere placeholder in the Bond series. It was conceived merely as something to fill screens and distract audience attention while the difficult chore of searching out a new actor to take over was taking place.
Fans of classic Bond probably regarded this movie to be an even bigger insult to the franchise than its mere ineptness would justify due to the fact that it is a remake of Goldfinger. Its connection to Fleming therefore comes via the fact that it is a blatant rip-off of a movie that was a good adaptation of a Fleming novel. Fleming's short story collection For Your Eyes Only contains a short story called From A View To A Kill, but that story has nothing to do with this movie that I can see. The movie's teaser shows Bond in Siberia retrieving a microchip from the body of one of the Secret Service's unluckier double-ohs. Said microchip turns out to be an exact replica of some super secret design of chip that was impervious to the electro-magnetic pulse created by the detonation of an atomic bomb. British intelligence is convinced that the theft of the chip design occurred after Frenchy Max Zorin bought the concern that was under contract to manufacture the chips. Even though the one passing the design along to the Russians could probably anyone of the hundreds of employees of the chip manufacturer, Bond has no desire to go combing through personnel files to get a lead on the industrial spy. Bond instead proposes to go right to the top and start nosing around Zorin himself.
While this is frankly not really an approach I would think most people would take to the problem given the large number of suspects, some casual observation of Zorin leads Bond to believe the guy's a dirty, rotten cheater. In particular, it is suspected that he is somehow cheating at the Sport of Kings itself by running doped horses. Now since this movie is a take-off on Goldfinger, it's hard to give the filmmakers too much credit for adding a Fleming-esque touch to the film. Goldfinger cheated at cards and golf both remember, so the fact that Zorin is cheating at horse racing is by no means an original touch. Nevertheless, a couple of times in Fleming's books the fact that someone is cheating at a game or sport is Bond's tip-off that that person is a villainous cad and bounder who bears close watching. Thus while Bond's desire to snoop around Zorin is ill-motivated by the finding of espionage at the manufacturing site, the fact that Zorin is a cheat allows Bond to be certain that he is indeed the one that bears watching.
Convinced Zorin is up to no good, Bond infiltrates a horse sale at his ludicrously large estate by posing as obnoxious prig John St. John-Smythe. I must give Moore some credit here as he digs into the part of the St. John-Smythe with evident relish making for some of the funnier sequences in the series. I particularly get a kick out of how Moore uses his cover to add just the extra touch of boorishness to his goading of Zorin. While at Zorin's chateau, Bond also meets Stacey Sutton who will serve not only as the "final" girl but also as a human plot-point. Here, Bond finds out that Zorin has written her an extremely large check - the significance of which will become apparent later. Meanwhile, Bond learns how Zorin is doping the horses (not that we really care) and when found out must escape death at Zorin's hands. In all honesty the entire horse subplot doesn't really have anything to do with subsequent events, but then again Goldfinger's cheating at golf and smuggling gold really didn't have much to do with Fort Knox either did it?
The action now jumps to San Francisco, where Bond finds out that Zorin is pumping seawater into abandoned oil wells. After Bond hooks up with Sutton once again, further investigation also turns up the fact that Zorin owns an abandoned mine that he is packing full of explosives. Why is he doing these things? Let me just lay it all out for you. We are supposed to believe that, by pumping sea water into underground wells and detonating a boxcar load of explosives over two converging fault lines, Zorin can create an earthquake severe enough to destroy Silicon Valley. Why does he want to destroy Silicon Valley? Zorin has been stockpiling microchips and believes that he can corner the market once the primary manufacturer of chips has been eliminated. This is where the attempt to ape Goldfinger falls apart. Surprisingly, there are several movies that seem pretty complacent about the possibility of creating a manmade earthquake. We'll even discuss another one before this countdown ends! I'm pretty dubious on this score, however. After all don't fault lines separate landmasses the size of continents? Doesn’t the motion of these incredibly large segments of the earth’s crust cause the fault line slippage that starts earthquakes? Is it reasonable to believe that any explosion, no matter how large, could possibly start entire continents moving? And even if we suspend our disbelief on this point, Zorin's plan makes no economic sense. Zorin can't possibly corner the microchip market because the vast majority of microchips are in private hands. If you're reading this now, you have one sitting in a box right next to you. All Zorin would gain by destroying Silicon Valley is a halt in the production of new microchips. People have no need to buy his stockpiled chips at exorbitant prices because they can just keep the ones they have in good repair until prices for new ones come back down.
In any event, Bond and Sutton show up at Zorin's explosive-packed mine just as the timer on the detonator is being set. Zorin sends his henchwomen after the pair and after they have set off, he double-crosses everyone that works for him bar one by flooding the mine and machine-gunning the survivors. Bond and Sutton survive the flooding (of course!), but so does Zorin's henchwoman May Day. Deciding to get even with Zorin for the double-cross, she helps Bond remove the detonator from the mine and Zorin's plan collapses (of course!). All that's left is for Bond to rescue Sutton after Zorin has abducted her during his escape in a blimp. Said rescue, as it may go without saying, subsequently results in the destruction of Zorin and the blimp both.
Cult-fave Christopher Walken plays Zorin here, but actually turns in a somewhat disappointing performance. Walken always comes across as someone constantly straining to keep his psychotic impulses in check, and that's just when he's doing lighthearted comedies! The ingredients for a successful Bond villain are there, but his performance is severely hobbled by his horrendous miscasting. Christopher Walken as a French industrialist? The guy's no more European than J. W. Pepper. Given that Zorin's nationality is not particularly relevant to the plot, the scriptwriters really missed the chance to give Walken free reign by simply making Zorin an American. Walken here spends an inordinate amount of thesping energy simply keeping that Noo Yawk accent of his in check, and little is left to add conviction to his lines. I always get a little chuckle when, after capturing Bond, he says "You amuse me Mr. Bond." without in fact displaying even the slightest hint of amusement. Is this method acting - substituting a show of amusement with a show of feeling completely uncomfortable at having to appear before movie cameras? He does have his moments. I particularly like his goofy little cackle that erupts at utterly inappropriate moments. Somehow it manages to at least hint at the sociopathic feelings of self-importance so marked in the good Bond villain. Still, given that Walken is so incapable of passing as European, his over-affected attempt at upper-class demeanor puts one most in mind of an amoral prep school brat who snuck into Yale as a legacy because his daddy went there. While such a personage is still one we can hiss as a villain, Goldfinger he ain't.
The movie also incorporates a sub-plot regarding Zorin's origin that is not only suspect in and of itself, but in addition serves to motivate a couple of truly appalling sequences. The script implies that the Russians recruited an ex-Nazi scientist to perform genetic experiments on humans in an effort to breed children of exceptional intelligence and strength. Zorin and his henchwomen are supposedly the results of these genetic experiments. The implication is that they are indeed possessed of super intelligence and strength, but are psychotic as a side effect of the procedure. The problem with this lies in the fact that there is no evidence of the enhanced strength or intelligence of the principle villains. There are moments when May Day shows strength beyond what would be expected of a woman, but none of them merit introducing this questionable sub-plot. Nazi medical experiments are just too serious a subject to bring up in a piece of fluff like this, and the whole thing is vaguely distasteful to say the least. Even worse is the way the movie has decided to hammer home the idea of Zorin's psychosis with a couple of truly grisly moments. After catching a Russian spying on his oil well in San Francisco, Zorin orders the spy thrown into the pipeline and he ends up getting chopped up by a turbine fan. Now Bond films have featured some grim deaths at the teeth of sharks for example in the past, so if this were an isolated incident it might be excusable. What's not excusable is the scene in which Zorin first floods his mine, drowning and electrocuting many of his workmen, and then proceeds to laugh uproariously while machine-gunning the survivors. This is just plain repulsive and, coming as it does at the movie's climax, it leaves a very sour aftertaste when the end credits begin to roll.
A View To A Kill features Fiona Fullerton as a lovely blonde spy that Bond temporarily hooks up with after running into her near Zorin's oil-rig. The entire Russian spy-plot is so ill-motivated that Ms. Fullerton's part is completely extraneous even by the less than exacting standards of plot necessity found in the Bond franchise. Her time on screen is so brief that the role merits little in the way of discussion. What we are stuck with for nearly the entire running time is one Stacey Sutton - acted (in the loosest sense of that word) by Tanya Roberts. Now that poor Ms. Roberts is probably best known for her participation in the legendary mega-turkey Sheena and has been reduced to eking out a living by "acting" in direct-to-video soft-core erotic thrillers, anything too harsh from me would just amount to an ungenerous piling on. While even O.J.'s Dream Team couldn't possibly defend the poor lady from the charge of being unable to act, I can at least indict the scriptwriters as co-conspirators in bringing this truly abysmal Bond girl to our movie screens. Sutton in this movie is literally a walking plot-contrivance. Why does she show up at Zorin's chateau while Bond is under-cover there? So Bond has someone to contact concerning Zorin when he sees her again in San Francisco. Why does Bond need to contact her in San Francisco? So he can gain admittance to San Francisco City Hall where she works. Why does he need to get into City Hall? So he can find a map of the location of Zorin's mine and head off to it for the film's finale. Sutton's only purpose in the picture, besides the obvious one of ending up in a clinch with Bond at the end, is enabling Bond to conveniently hop from point to point in his pursuit of Zorin. At least 60% of Sutton's dialogue consists of clunky exposition about oil wells and fault lines and abandoned mines. The other 40% unfortunately consists of her stridently screaming "James" and "Help me".
Another disturbing wrinkle in the Bond-Sutton relationship arises due to Moore's rather advanced age at the time of filming. Rog was 57 when this movie was made, and at this point in his career as Bond he was definitely starting to show his years. Of course in recent years Hollywood has treated us to an endless parade of geezers romantically linked to women one eighth their age, so in comparison Moore's pairing with Roberts in this film seems far less aberrant than what regularly makes it to the cinema today. And even if Moore was showing his age we do go to a Bond film to suspend disbelief, so his age didn't necessarily have to prove a disaster to the movie. Moore however was cursed in his later years as Bond with scripted scenes that seemed to emphasize rather than downplay his age. A classic example of this occurs here when Bond first goes to Sutton's home in San Francisco to talk to her. After Bond beats back an attempted assault on Sutton by Zorin's stooges, he actually makes dinner for her! Now Bond diffusing a nuclear weapon I can buy, but baking a quiche? With the possible exception of pottering around the garden growing vegetable marrows, is there anything one would be less likely to find Bond doing? This would merely be a nitpick if it wasn't for the fact that some watching some old guy make dinner for a woman half his age is just not what most would think of as romantic. It reminds me of nothing so much as old dad visiting his little girl's college and whipping up her favorite dinner at her college apartment. This feeling is exacerbated further when Sutton goes to bed and Bond stays up all night with a shotgun in case Zorin's goons return. I'd like to laud Bond for restraint here. After all, Connery would probably have been forcing himself on the woman. With the age disparity, however, I'm again getting this "You go to bed, and your old dad will just sleep here on the couch." kind of vibe throughout this scene.
The only other significant female part is May Day, Zorin's henchwoman/girlfriend, played by Grace Jones. The femme fatale/black widow character is a staple of Bond pictures, but I'm going to defer the discussion of this character until later. May Day is an exceptional case because she is actually this film's Nick Knack - an utterly improbable variation on the Oddjob character. In fact, the only apparent purpose of the unpleasant Nazi genetic experiments sub-plot is to justify her exceptional strength. The female Oddjob is a ridiculous idea for at least two reasons. First, even if May Day is strong enough to make a tussle with Bond a fair fight, no one is going to tolerate the sight of Bond judo chopping or rabbit punching a woman. This eliminates the entire rational for an Oddjob character, namely to justify a vicious hand-to-hand struggle to the death. Second, not only can't she fulfill the fighting role for the brawny henchman, but neither can she fulfill the other role of a female character by being seductive and alluring. At the very least Bond moviegoers demand femininity in their female characters, not the ability to bench-press like a Russian power lifter. In truth, I actually feel kind of sorry for Grace Jones for the way she appears here. Of course to a large extent she made her own bed when she chose to craft her stage persona to appeal to the inexplicable early 80's desire for androgeneity in pop stars. Still even though she's certainly no beauty queen, neither is she an outright hag. Instead of demanding at least a modicum of femininity from Jones, however, the filmmakers went to the opposite extreme and made her look as freakishly unappealing as possible. Given her outlandish appearance and bizarre behavior, I can't believe that we're supposed to approach May Day and Bond's romantic interlude with anything other than a shudder. And it's not even as though Jones appears to be enjoying herself during the film. She stalks through the film with one unvarying expression on her face - an expression of extreme sullenness not unlike the kind of look you get from your teenage daughter when trying to explain why she must be home by 11:00 instead of midnight like all her friends.
As I alluded to earlier, a listing of stunt work for this film is simultaneously a chronicling of self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot. With very few exceptions, every stunt is followed by moments of extreme risibility that only serve to totally diminish its effectiveness. The problem starts immediately with the film's teaser. After traveling to Siberia to locate the MacGuffin microchip that sets the plot in motion, Bond is spotted by Russian military types and pursued on skis. Now even though the ski chase had become somewhat old hat by the time of this movie, this particular pursuit is fairly well done. The ski stunt team has always done yeoman work on the slopes, and this effort is one of their better ones. At one point in the chase, Bond ends up with one ski broken and he is forced to use a snowmobile runner as a snowboard to escape his pursuers. Instead of letting well enough alone, the filmmakers use the Beach Boys "California Girls" as a musical cue over the chase. This comes across as so ridiculous that any sense of excitement engendered by the good stunt work is immediately quashed. To make matters even worse, when Bond finally eludes his pursuers he escapes in a goofy looking watercraft that has been decked out in Styrofoam in a totally unsuccessful attempt to make it resemble a block of ice.
Another stunt sequence that works well while in progress but seems highly dubious in retrospect comes about as a result of Bond's trip to Paris to meet with a detective named Eggplant. (Actually his name is Aubergine, but just look that up in a French-English dictionary to see what I mean.) The detective has been keeping Zorin under surveillance in an attempt to learn how he is doping his horses without getting caught. Aubergine is assassinated by May Day during a lunch with Bond, and Bond runs after her out of the restaurant and up the stairs at the Eiffel Tower. May Day parachutes off the Eiffel Tower, and Bond ends up commandeering a vehicle to chase after her as she drifts along the Seine. While my overall disinterest in vehicle chases should be clear by now, at least this one spices things up somewhat by progressively destroying the car that Bond has commandeered. Bond is left with only a quarter of a car by the time May Day lands on a boat sailing down the Seine. When Bond leaps aboard the boat from a bridge over the river, May Day leaps into a waiting speedboat and motors away. The whole sequence actually works fairly well, though it's far more humorous than suspenseful. The problem with it only becomes apparent after it's all done. Why in the world was that speedboat waiting at the end of the chase? Was that truly May Day's plan to escape - leaping from the Eiffel Tower to land on a nearby boat and all? Who devised that assassination plan anyway? Rube Goldberg?
Probably partially due to Moore's advancing age, A View To A Kill features two of the limpest fist fights ever committed to celluloid. One occurs while Bond is snooping around Zorin's stables with sidekick Sir Godfrey Tibbet (played by former Avenger Patrick MacNee). Two of Zorin's goons catch them in the act and a weak fight breaks out between them and Bond. The fight is not at all well edited and it's not even clear how Bond manages to dispatch the pair. Later in the film another desultory fight breaks out at Sutton's home when more of Zorin's goons show up to assault her. Not only does Moore show clear signs that his age is slowing him down, but the fight also features Sutton breaking an urn with her grandfather's ashes over one of the goon's heads! It might have been kind of funny back when Lucy knocked out a burglar in the Ricardo apartment with some pottery to the head, but some 40 odd years later even TV sit-coms are hesitant to use the gag.
After Zorin has seen through Bond's cover as St. John-Smythe, he asks Bond to go riding with him. Bond is nearly injured as soon as he takes to the saddle as the colt Zorin has brought for Bond to ride is not fully broken. Surrounded by a hoard of Zorin's toughs also on horseback, Bond is forced to ride a steeplechase course. Not only does Zorin have the hazards moved during the course, but Bond is surrounded by toughs taking swipes at him for nearly it's entire length. This is one of the few stunt sequences in the film that's not played for laughs, and it makes for suspenseful viewing. With stuntmen being thrown to the ground while horses thunder past, there must have been some pretty tense moments on the set indeed. And for once in the film, the scene doesn't end ridiculously. After riding off the course Bond espies his car and thinking that Tibbet is driving, he rides over to it only to find May Day at the wheel. He is knocked out and the car is pushed into a nearby lake. When Bond comes to under water, he leaves the car only to see Zorin and his henchpersons still standing by the lakeshore. Unable to surface immediately, he uses the air in the cars tires to breath underwater. The bit makes for a clever end to an original chase, and the entire sequence makes for one of the best parts of the film.
While Bond and Sutton are looking for information in San Francisco City Hall, Zorin and May Day surprise them. This scene provides proof positive that for a guy who always playing murderous crazies in films, Walken knows absolutely nothing about guns. Zorin is supposed to be holding Bond at bay with a revolver, but all through the scene Walken is waving the thing around, gesticulating with it, and for the clincher pointing the gun at his head (!!) while talking about genius. Get that man to an N.R.A. gun safety course before he acts again! Zorin's plan is to trap Bond and Sutton in an elevator after killing Sutton's boss with Bond's gun. Zorin and May Day throw Molotov cocktails on the elevator and around the building, hoping that City Hall will burn down and Bond and Sutton will be posthumously blamed for her boss' death. Bond and Sutton's need to leave the elevator before fire snaps the cable could have made for a suspenseful bit. The entire thing is totally spoiled however by the previously mentioned strident screaming of Sutton. Throughout the entire scene, she is screaming "James, James" and mysteriously "Don't leave me!" as Bond exits the shaft looking for something to use to haul her out. This is not only grating, but also not really in character either. Why would she think Bond is going to leave her to burn to death? He just sat up the whole night with a shotgun to keep her safe, and now she thinks he's going to run out on her? I don't know whose idea it was to have Roberts caterwauling throughout this scene. I doubt that ten minutes of yelling "James. James" was actually scripted, but even if it was the director ultimately has to take the blame for not noticing how annoying it was.
As if ten minutes of Tanya Roberts shrieking weren't bad enough, what immediately follows causes Diamonds Are Forever flashbacks. Sutton's boss was shot with Bond's gun remember, so after escaping from the fire Bond finds himself wanted by the police. Just as in Diamonds Are Forever, the subsequent vehicle chase is motivated solely by Bond's unwillingness to submit to a brief detainment at the hands of American police. How many times now has Bond worked closely with American intelligence? In Goldfinger, the movie this one is ripping off, Bond was asked to the White House for cocktails with the President! Is there absolutely no one that he can call to come down to the station and explain things to the local police? If Bond were tagged in Beijing, say, his willingness to resort to extreme measures to avoid arrest would be understandable. In the United States, however, his resisting arrest is just irresponsible. At least when Bond risks charges of felony murder in this film the result is somewhat more exciting than what transpired in the earlier film, although the entire episode is still played largely for laughs. Bond leads police on a high-speed chase here in a stolen fire truck. There's definitely some missing dialogue here because Bond tells Sutton to take over the wheel, and then he climbs out onto the fire truck's trailer. Why in the world he's doing this is quite mysterious on first viewing; especially given the fact that the fire ladder is unlocked. The ladder swings free and Bond is forced to cling to it as it swings out off the truck and over traffic. It couldn't be that Bond went back there just as an excuse for a goofy stunt, could it? In fairness, it does become clear that Bond was just heading for a rear cab on the trailer so that he could steer the trailer from side to side to block pursuing police cars. The chase finally ends when the fire truck manages to leap a drawbridge ahead of the trailing police cars. Not content to leave us mildly amused by Bond's horrendously ill-motivated but somewhat entertaining run-in with the fire truck, however, the film attempts to get laughs by showing police stupidly drive up to the end of the draw bridge. Not surprisingly they plummet back to the ground when the drawbridge reaches its peak, and several police are hideously maimed in the resulting crashes. Well actually that last bit doesn't happen in the movie, but it certainly would in real life.
I'd like to say the movie goes out on a high note, but that's only true if you turn the film off about two minutes before the credits roll. After Zorin's scheme has been defeated with May Day's help, Bond exits the mine only to see Sutton snatched by Zorin from his escaping blimp. This scene has oft been ridiculed as it does make Sutton look especially dim to not notice a slow-moving blimp motoring up behind her. Because what follows is pretty entertaining, I'm willing to let it pass however. They could have simply edited it a bit differently to save Roberts some embarrassment. As the blimp motors off, Bond grabs a hold of a mooring rope and clings to it as the blimp floats off over San Francisco bay. No matter what you feel about some or Moore's films, you really have to have nothing but admiration for the stunt men who worked on them. Even for a movie as crummy as this, they were out there giving their all and risking their lives by clinging to blimps in flight. As the blimp flies over the Golden Gate Bridge Bond manages to wrap the mooring rope around the bridge supports and fix the blimp in place. A subsequent attack by Sutton on the blimp's pilot results in it crashing into the bridge and becoming further disabled. Zorin leaves the blimp with an axe and heads down the bridge cable to kill Bond. The resulting struggle is a fairly effective one and helped immeasurably by good back-projection. It must be said however that Zorin doesn't seem to be showing any of that super strength he was supposedly bred with. Zorin ends up loosing his footing, then his grip, and plunging to his death in the bay below. The Nazi doctor lights some dynamite to hurl at Bond but drops it in the blimp's cabin when Bond uses the axe to cut it loose, and the whole affair is rapped up with a literal bang. Once again, however, the filmmakers couldn't leave well enough alone and had to add a goofy coda before the end credits. After the fight on the bridge Bond goes to Sutton's home to hide out, and British intelligence sends "Q" over to spy on him with a silly little remote control robot. Thus one of Bond's most ridiculous adventures ends as it began by following up good stunt work with something both poorly conceived and risible.
After Moore's successful tenure as James Bond it's truly a pity that he had to go out so poorly. Carelessness is really the hallmark of the production. So many questionable calls were made by the director, screenwriters, producers, and other assorted cast and crew members that one has to wonder whether the Dom Perignon was flowing just a bit too freely at Rog's going away parties. At least the stunt crew had their heads on straight and managed to bring a handful of entertaining bits to the screen. Perhaps it's best to just regard this film and the earlier Diamonds Are Forever as cautionary tales. The casual approach to the final films of both Connery and Moore implies a complete confidence on the part of the producers of the Bond films that the franchise would continue after their leading man's departure. While the confidence is admirable, there's a fine line between confidence in this context and hubris. After all there was a very real possibility that Connery or Moore couldn't have been replaced in the part, and that would have left us with a total stinker of a film as the last movie in the franchise. One can only hope that the producers have learned their lesson from these two disasters. Our current Bond, Pierce Brosnan, certainly can't continue in the part indefinitely, so let's just keep our fingers crossed so that when he decides to jump we won't be subjected to another A View To A Kill.
What is possible to write about Sean Connery's amazingly successful run as James Bond that hasn't already been written? How can the Bond fanatic refrain from heaping even more laurels on his big, fat head? Would James Bond even be appearing in films today if someone else had starred in Dr. No? It's easy to make the case that without Connery, the franchise may never have gotten off the ground. Blessed with quantities of sexual charisma and masculinity far out of proportion to his already rather outsize frame, Connery dominates the screen in a way very few actors ever have. And lest you think I'm some kind of sissy boy for going on about these particular attributes, let me point out that my observations are easily confirmed by the fact that People magazine could still be taken seriously (or maybe I should say, no less seriously) when they voted him "Sexiest Man of the Year" when he was in his 60's. For those of us far more modestly, if not negligibly, endowed, the man's astounding sex appeal will forever be a thing of awe.
It may come as a bit of a surprise that Fleming himself thought Connery all wrong for the part. It's probably understandable in a way. I can just see Fleming's well-breed, scion-of-wealthy-banker-stock nose turning up at the idea of some great Scottish, body-building lummox portraying his treasured creation on screen. The earliest idea for Bond was to get an actor of the utmost urbanity. Cary Grant, for example, was actually approached to take the role for Dr. No. Had he done so the Bond films would have probably taken most of their inspiration from older far more genteel espionage thrillers like The 39 Steps. Now Grant was no slouch in the charisma department. I certainly can't imagine that he had too much trouble with the ladies. But with Connery as the lead, it was an entirely different ballgame. When that hairy bruiser took the stage people could see someone was going to get hurt, and this extreme physicality was what I think served to separate Bond from the rest of the pack when he first showed up on screen. Fleming, by the way, realized the truth about Connery pretty quickly and even though he passed away shortly after From Russia With Love was made, I have to think that he was happy with the big screen version of his beloved creation.
And yet as good as Connery was, he was still fully capable of dropping a 100 megaton bomb like Diamonds Are Forever on the audience. Of all the Bond movies made, I have to admit that this one is the only film that I find downright unpleasant to watch. Sure I'll admit that ex-girlfriend thing had me wanting to unholster my Walther and put a bullet in my head, but Teri Hatcher is one of life's little problems easily solved by judicious application of the fast-forward button. This movie hurts for practically it's entire running time. Part of the problem lies with Connery himself. Now while there are elements of Connery's on-screen Bond persona that I have disliked, more relevant to the discussion at hand here is how Connery's off-screen interest in the role severely deteriorated over time. As he tired of the role, each new movie saw him more and more just going through the motions. Fed up and bored with the part after You Only Live Twice, he left the role for what he thought were bigger and better things. When his replacement George Lazenby self-immolated, the Bond producers enticed him back to star in Diamonds Are Forever with what was a record breaking salary for the time. To Connery's credit, he used the money to set up a Scottish charity. And yet, maybe it would have been better if he had kept it. Maybe if he had, he would have felt an obligation to show up on the set to act. In Diamonds Are Forever, Connery gives a textbook quality example of a phoned-in performance. In fact maybe phoned-in is a bit too kind. It would be more accurate to say that Connery told his chauffeur to go down to the local petrol station, wash the Rolls, and use the payphone to call the set with Sean's performance while he was waiting.
On the other hand, Connery had a lot of help in ruining this movie. Peopled with the most unlikable characters ever scripted and filmed in some of the most gaudy and unpleasant locales ever visited, Diamonds Are Forever is just plain ugly. If it weren't for the fact that the first twenty minutes or so is well done and reasonably faithful to Fleming's book and the movie is possessed of a few moments that hearken back to the "classic" Bond era, this one might well find itself even nearer the bottom than it is. In addition after watching it again recently for this review, I found it to be even dumber than I had remembered it to be. Maybe in placing it this high in the countdown I'm just overcompensating a bit for the fact that I've had a lot more time to become familiar with this movie and consequently more time to breed the proverbial contempt. In any case, I'd find it pretty easy to entertain an argument for its demotion.
Fleming himself can most definitely not be blamed for the disaster that appears on the screen. Even though most Fleming fans will admit that Diamonds Are Forever is one of his weaker efforts, the most successful parts of the film are those that hew closely to the source material. Fleming's novel tells the straightforward story of Bond's attempts to close down a diamond smuggling pipeline. The villains in Diamonds Are Forever are nothing more than hoodlums - the bosses of a woefully inefficient branch of organized crime. Needless to say, these mob bosses didn't make it to the screen even in name. Bond's impersonation of a smuggler named Peter Francs and his meeting with the diamond smuggler's contact in Britain, Tiffany Case, is reproduced in a reasonably faithful manner in the movie. In addition, Fleming's pair of gay assassins, Wint and Kidd, show up here albeit in extremely eccentric form. Material from the book is almost completely abandoned at around the 30-minute mark, however, so Fleming can't shoulder any blame for the hard right turn into outright sleaziness.
In a pre-credits teaser, we are led to believe that Bond has finally dispatched his arch-adversary Ernst Stavro Blofeld. With this the shared opinion of the Secret Service, Bond is put on the more mundane task of trying to infiltrate a gang smuggling diamonds out of South Africa. Interspersed between scenes of Bond moving forward with his mission are scenes of Wint and Kidd killing the various links in the smuggling pipeline. As in the book, Bond poses as smuggler Peter Francs and meets with Tiffany Case, a contact in Amsterdam here, and together they plan to smuggle a large quantity of diamonds to America.
The real Peter Francs escapes from custody and attempts to meet with Case himself. Bond heads Francs off and kills him after a brutal fight in an elevator. We are now only at the half-hour mark and already the film starts taking a turn for the worse. After killing Francs Bond switches identification with him, so when Tiffany comes on the scene she thinks Francs is Bond. She immediately starts to panic and claims "You don't just kill James Bond and expect to get away with it.". Now isn't James Bond supposed to be a secret agent? How would she even know anything about him? Would he possibly be that well known that smugglers all over the world immediately recognize the name? Do secret agent groupies follow him around London asking for his autograph? This sort of carelessness is on constant display throughout the film.
Things get even stinkier when Bond and Tiffany use Francs' body to smuggle the diamonds into America - the strong implication being that they (ugh!) shoved the diamonds up the man's rectum. I don't even want to conjecture who carried out that little chore. This "crafty" little smuggling sequence also provides clear evidence of Connery's total unwillingness to actually act for his money. Bond pretends that Francs was his brother and he is taking the body back to America for the funeral. Even though Bond is going on about how close they were and how he had so much to say to him, Connery can't be bothered to appear even slightly bereaved at his brother's untimely death. In fact, Connery can barely keep a smirk off his face for the entire scene!
After he delivers the diamonds an attempt is made on Bond's life, but it is prevented when it is learned that Bond has delivered phonies and has hidden the real diamonds somewhere else. By means of plot contrivance, Bond ends up at a hotel owned by the multi-millionaire Willard Whyte - a thinly disguised satire of Howard Hughes assayed by pork sausage maven Jimmy Dean. To make a long, tortuous story short, Bond gives the diamonds to Tiffany Case to deliver to her contact and a subsequent attempt is made on her life. Realizing her life is in danger, Case teams up with Bond to follow the diamonds to their final destination. They find the diamonds going first to Willard Whyte's right-hand man, and subsequently to one of Whyte's research labs.
Naturally concluding that Whyte is up to something with the diamonds, Bond breaks into his penthouse apartment. But instead of Whyte in the penthouse, Bond finds (Are you sitting down?) Blofeld. We are now supposed to believe that since Whyte was a recluse who never left his apartment, Blofeld was able to kidnap him and assume control of his empire. Here the movie nearly becomes indistinguishable from an Austin Powers parody. If Blofeld has assumed control of Whyte's empire, then he can already live the life of a fabulously wealthy man. This self-same situation was played for laughs in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil returned to find that No. 2's legitimate investments earned far more money than they could earn from holding the world hostage. Just as Dr. Evil didn't need to hold the world hostage in Austin Powers, Blofeld doesn't need to in this movie either. Even sillier is the fact that Blofeld has been paying people to become his look-alikes through plastic surgery. When Bond enters the penthouse, he finds not one but two apparent Blofelds. Why does Blofeld even need doubles? Who does he think he is, Saddam Hussein? And besides doesn't everybody think he's dead anyway? Are we supposed to believe that Blofeld is using doubles to throw pursuers off the track? Well if that was your plan Blofeld, here's a tip - don't sit around in the exact same place with your doubles all day! Your double can't really lead anyone astray if he spends all his time just sitting around with you! In any event to make sure this whole meeting with Blofeld becomes a complete self-parody, Blofeld ends up holding Bond at gunpoint and instead of shooting him puts him in an easily escapable death trap.
To rap this up, I'll just let you in on Blofeld's scheme. He has been using the diamonds to construct a satellite "laser" weapon with which to ransom the world. Blofeld has escaped to his secret hideout on an offshore oil rig from where he controls the diamond-studded satellite. Or is it a secret hide-out? This actually is part of the reason I found this thing ever dumber than I had remembered. Dialogue in the film leads us to believe that Blofeld has informed all the major powers were he's located so they can send representatives to him. I'm sorry, but if they know where he's based one of those countries is going to show up to blow him to hell and gone. And sure enough some sort of vaguely military group of helicopters from the U.S. does indeed quickly show up to make short work of Blofeld's rig. Even less explicable is Bond's trip to the rig. He parachutes down to the rig and is promptly captured. If he were trying to save Tiffany Case, who had been kidnapped by Blofeld, it might make sense, but those helicopters open fire the minute they reach the rig. They don't even hold their fire to make sure Bond's safe much less show any concern about Case, so if the plan was to save her then someone didn't get the memo. In any event Bond and Case leap clear of the rig before it's completely destroyed and subsequently are seen trying to share some quality time aboard a ocean liner. The overly loyal Wint and Kidd show up to kill them both, but are beaten back in their attempt by Bond just prior to the end credits rolling.
For fans of Blofeld this movie marks his last appearance as a major villain in an Eon picture. The character became tied up in court cases surrounding the rights to Thunderball, and Eon never wanted to risk more litigation by attempting to bring him back. While Blofeld still appears in each scene with his trademark white cat, Blofeld actually has a full head of hair for a change in this movie. Unfortunately for Blofeld fans, however, Charles Gray's performance here is at best so-so. Far from being menacing, Gray can be far better described as prissy. He does have his moments. When he imperiously stalks into a room demanding that the operation be done tonight or tells his flunky to return to his post or be shot, he at least manages to project an aura of authority. Unfortunately, most of his moments are scripted as far too mannerly to do him justice. The nonsensical scene in the penthouse, for example, as played by Gray with his precise British diction and affected cigarette holder prop simply makes him come across as alarmingly effete. His scripted moments become a downright travesty when he is called upon to make his escape from the penthouse hideaway in drag! What with Wint and Kidd portrayed as openly homosexual and Blofeld shown stroking his cat while wearing a wig, dress and pearls, I just wonder if there's supposed to be some sort of subtext to the movie that has so far eluded me.
I'm also surprised at how threadbare SPECTRE's operation has become. Blofeld plays most of his scenes alone or with only one or two gun-toting lackeys. This guy owned an entire hollowed-out volcano with a rocket launching pad at one time, and now all he can afford to keep on the payroll is a literal handful of bodyguards/gunsels. And as for that oil rig hideout? The thing's equipped with a control room that's powered by one cassette tape (!) and looks to have slapped together by Ed Wood from a couple of plywood boards and a shower curtain. I know that Bond's dealt SPECTRE a lot of financial hits over the years, so maybe that explains their being reduced to such cut-rate villainy by this point in the series. Maybe it's best this is Blofeld's last appearance in the franchise. At the rate SPECTRE's finances are deteriorating, we might have next have seen Blofeld trying to threaten the world with a home-made radio kept in his van down by the river.
Making much of the movie unwatchable is the character of Tiffany Case. She is quite arguably the most unpleasant and unlikable "finale" female lead in the series. This is not entirely the fault of Jill St. John, but by no means does she get off the hook easily. In her very first scene she comes out carping about how she doesn't dress for the help and she starts laying into Bond for expressing concern about the size of the smuggling job. I know what they were going for here. Case is supposed to be one brassy broad; tough as nails and brimming with self-confidence. What she comes across as on screen, however, is an unlikable bitch. Please pardon the salty language here, but I don't think any lesser characterization would capture the displeasure these early scenes raise in this viewer. This pose continues to be a problem as the movie progresses as well. When Bond arranges to pass the diamonds to her, she stalks through the resulting scene totally put out at having to do what is in fact her job in the smuggling pipeline and ends up crudely shrieking "Blow up your pants!" (whatever that means) to some kid. Later, even though she is helping Bond sneak into the back of a van, she starts railing at a gas station attendant to gas up her car with all too characteristic rudeness and disdain. I want to stress that I'm not transferring the character's unlikability to Ms. St. John personally. If you watch the Inside Diamonds Are Forever documentary on the DVD, she actually comes across as a pleasant and open person. On the other hand Case's first appearance in the movie actually follows her appearance in the book rather closely, so she's going to have to take some blame at being unable to project any warmth at this crucial part of the movie.
What Ms. St. John can't be blamed for is the lack of a chance to get a second chance at letting the audience warm to her part. This is after all a genre picture, so we know Case is going to soften like a chocolate bar in the sun to Bond's manly charms by the time the picture ends. If the screenwriters had scripted any scenes to show this softening, it might have gone a long way toward ameliorating the negative impact some of her unpleasant attitudes have on the audience. What we get instead of softening, however, is scene after scene meant to imply that Case is not only unlikable but deceitful and untrustworthy as well. Her and Bond's first interlude in bed comes about because she wants him to turn over the diamonds. A lot of time is spent discussing whether or not Bond and her should double-cross their employers and flee with the diamonds. Since they don't in fact do this, all it serves to do is make her look duplicitous. After the nature of Bond's mission becomes clear Case becomes far more friendly to Bond's various allies, but only prior to asking them to exert themselves to keep her out of jail. Thus instead of projecting likability, she ends up seeming manipulative. Later she espies Blofeld sneaking out of the hotel, follows him out, and ends up captured. This is actually somewhat inexplicable, because she hasn't seen the guy at all and shouldn't know what he (or his cat) looks like. Gaping plot hole aside, however, when Bond boards the oil rig later he finds Case sunning herself on deck in a bikini. Has she gone over to Blofeld's side? At this point we don't know, so we can add apparent betrayal to her list of negative attributes. While she later comes back to Bond's side and helps him play a game of hot potato with a cassette tape in an effort to disable Blofeld's satellite, she ends up making matters worse instead of better. Finally called upon to fire at Blofeld's goons with a machine gun, she ends up being knocked over the side of the rig by the recoil. These scenes complete the arc of her character development; from unlikable harridan to total ditz. My favorite cringe inducing moment of the movie continues to be the scene in which Bond finds Case in his bed at his hotel room. When Bond says "I assume that I'm the condemned man, and you're the hearty brake-fasht [sic].", I can only think that if that's the breakfast you might as well just move on the execution.
I was actually going to pass over the character of Plenty O'Toole (yes, yes, named after her father no doubt) played by Lana Wood. Other than justification for a smutty joke, O'Toole is just an excuse for another female role and she has very little screen time. Still, let's ponder her role for a minute as another totally terrible decision on the part of the screenwriters. Plenty latches onto Bond at the craps table and, after he wins big, goes back to his hotel room with him. Remember that discussion of male romantic fantasy that I indulged in below in my review of Tomorrow Never Dies? Is this truly what the scriptwriters think of as a male fantasy? Do all men want to pick up some gold-digging tramp who will sleep with anyone who wins big at the casino? This whole interlude uncomfortably brings concerns about STD's to the fore for perhaps the only time in the series. If this is really what it's come to, why don't the screen writers just have Bond cruise down to the red-light district looking for streetwalkers the next time he feels randy?
At least some interest is provided in the characters of Wint and Kidd. I'll grant that these pair are somewhat delicately balanced between providing comic relief and being a palpable menace. While their homosexuality is a holdover from the book, in which they are simply portrayed as vicious thugs, there is little overt in their behavior here. The pair is more notable for Putter Smith's odd appearance as the pudgy and balding Kidd and Bruce Glover's odd delivery of his lines as Wint. The only real hint of homosexuality is their holding hands in an early scene and Wint's rather fey application of his aftershave. While they aren't really imposing physically, their appearances on screen are always associated with the death or near-death of a character. Relying on being sneaky or deceitful instead of brute strength, I think in general they tend to come down on the side of fostering suspense rather than provoking laughs. In particular, their assassination of a dentist at the movie's start by means of a scorpion is one of the nastier and most memorable scenes in the franchise.
One of the very biggest faults of the movie, and one that the filmmakers should have seen from the outset was a mistake, was setting practically the entire thing in Las Vegas. And remember, this was made in the very early 70's so this was pre-family friendly Las Vegas. This was sin city at its tawdriest. This was the city of neon, kitsch, lounge lizards, organized crime, and smoky casinos dedicated to fleecing compulsive gamblers. This was miles away from the ritzy European casinos filled with men in formal wear and women in evening gowns that featured earlier in the series. This is poorly dressed Midwestern yokels just off the plane from Minnesota waiting to lose the mortgage payment at the blackjack tables and slot machines. The setting is not just unexotic, it is downright charmless and tacky; Connery's desperate attempt to class up the joint by wearing a white tuxedo not withstanding. At one point in the film, Bond makes Case rather unnecessarily jump from attraction to attraction at Circus Circus before he hands over the diamonds to her. Circus Circus, with its fairground games and sideshow barkers, looks just like a Midwestern traveling fair and is totally out of place in a Bond movie. So bizarre in feel is the Circus Circus scene I remember, while channel surfing a few years back, stumbling across this movie during it and being totally unaware of what I was watching. And finally, not being content with highlighting Vegas' sleazier aspects, the filmmakers remind us that the city is located in the center of an uninhabitable desert by locating a vehicle chase there. The filmmakers really should have known better simply from reading Fleming's book. Fleming was an enthusiastic traveler and based all his books around trips that he himself had made. Usually his zest for seeing new places led him to present the locales of his books in the most glowing terms. Diamonds Are Forever was the rare exception. So depressed was he by his trip to Vegas, Fleming denounced it the most scathing possible terms in the book. This fact should have alerted the filmmakers in no uncertain terms that Vegas was not a glamorous and exciting spot to center a Bond movie around.
At least the movie gets off to a good start with the pre-credits teaser. Sadly, it’s possibly the high-point of the film. Admittedly, the teaser is somewhat confusing - especially when the film is viewed out of sequence. When the teaser starts, Bond is circling the globe trying to beat the location of Blofeld out of an assorted set of bit players. I'm not sure whether to knock Connery's acting here or not. For continuity buffs, given the fact that this film immediately followed On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond should be filled with homicidal rage at Blofeld. Connery, however, tosses people around with dialogue like "Shan't ask you again, old chap". I used to think that he just couldn't be bothered to exert the effort required to show rage. Seeing it again, however, and noting that the first guy getting tossed around is Japanese, I'm not sure if we weren't just supposed to forget Lazenby altogether and regard this as a sequel to You Only Live Twice. In any event, Bond learns Blofeld's location and infiltrates his hideout just prior to some lackey being operated on to become a Blofeld double. The lackey is buried in an avalanche of mud, but Blofeld and two henchmen show up to hold Bond at gunpoint. One of the henchman reaches into Bond's jacket for his gun only to get his hand caught in a razor-toothed mousetrap. A fight breaks out and in a nasty moment, Bond eliminates one henchman by throwing scalpels into his arm and chest. After this, Blofeld is knocked senseless and thrown into a pit of boiling mud. With the operating theater and pits of boiling mud, this teaser is perhaps the only sequence in the entire franchise that could be described as nightmarish. Furthermore in what is perhaps Connery's only attempt to act, he beams with glee at Blofeld's hideous death. His evident pleasure while saying "Welcome to hell, Blofeld" really represents Bond at his meanest.
There are also a pair of great bits that occur right before the movie runs off the rails. The first is an extremely brutal fight between Bond and Peter Francs in an elevator in Tiffany Case's Amsterdam apartment building. Fights were always one of Connery's strong suits while he starred as Bond, and his set-to with Francs' is one of the series' best. Taking place entirely inside the confines of an old European elevator, every punch results in broken glass and hand-to-hand grappling ends up putting one of the two in line to get a limb or head crushed between floors as the elevator ascends. When this fight ends, my suggestion is to just turn the movie off so you'll end on the highest possible note. Another chillingly effective moment occurs when Wint and Kidd lock Bond in a coffin and start the coffin traveling though a crematory chamber. Frankly, I don't think people are cremated inside coffins, so the verisimilitude of this sequence is in doubt. Still, however, Bond's coming to in the coffin surrounded with flames and having absolutely no escape succeeds as a very suspenseful and claustrophobic moment.
From here on out, however, it's practically all downhill. After the tediously padded sequences whereby Bond transfers the diamonds to Case and she in turn transfers them to their final destination, Bond winds up at a Whyte research complex. Some humor does result from Bond's impersonating a Whyte employee in order to snoop around the place. When Bond is found out, however, he ends up purloining a moon buggy (?!) in which to make his escape. Now quite frankly, I don't think a moon buggy is capable of very high speeds. Something constructed to drive around on the moon under conditions of very low gravity would probably not really need all that much power. I doubt you'd need much more power than a golf cart would deliver. This "moon buggy" however manages to easily outpace pursuing cars and crash though a barricade at the entrance to the complex. What I might allow for once the chase has moved to the open desert is the possibility that the buggy could remain ahead of the cars because of its maneuverability over rough terrain. If the intent of the filmmakers was to show this, however, they did it in the most unsatisfactory manner possible. The cars pursuing the buggy simply tear off at full speed into incredibly bumpy desert terrain and promptly run into dunes or ditches. Bond's escape seems less to do with the buggy's ability to travel over rough terrain than the fact that his pursuers are complete idiots.
After the goofy moon buggy escape, we are confronted with the world's most unnecessary car chase. And by this I don't mean unnecessary in some metaphysical sense: the way setting the world's record for sucking on lemons is an unnecessary addition to the history of human achievement. This chase is totally unnecessary to the plot of the movie itself. After fleeing the research compound in Case's Mustang, Bond and Case find the Las Vegas police have been asked to arrest them for "sabotage". Now Bond has been working with Felix Leiter of the CIA since touching down in America. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever that he shouldn't merely submit to arrest and call Leiter from down at the station. Presumably, an America intelligence operative would be down to spring him within an hour or two. Yet instead of submitting to this minor inconvenience, Bond leads the entire Las Vegas police force on a high speed chase through busy downtown streets. Causing several head-on crashes between the pursuing police and bumping up over the curve to threaten pedestrians on the sidewalk, Bond rather cavalierly risks the lives of many completely innocent people. Somehow, I don't think British intelligence envisioned the licence to kill as excusing felony manslaughter had one of the pedestrians gotten clipped or had a police man had flown though a windshield. I'll admit that the stunt driving during the early portions of the chase is reasonably well-done, but even so the whole thing falls apart once police cars start colliding with each other in a parking lot. And don't miss the Mother of all Continuity Errors when Bond evades the final police car by ramping the car up onto the two passenger side wheels only to exit a narrow alley up on the driver's side wheels.
At least after presenting this morally casual approach to running an intelligence operation on the soil of a friendly country is over, the film puts the gaudy neon of Las Vegas to good use for the only time in the film. Deciding to see Willard Whyte (actually Blofeld) in person, Bond approaches Whyte's penthouse apartment via the outside of the hotel building! First he steps on the top on an express elevator running up the side of the building. Next he grabs onto a bar at the top of the elevator shaft and lets the elevator fall away below him. Swinging to a platform, he fires pitons with attached cords into the side of the building. After attaching the cords to clips in his belt, he then swings out off the ledge to dangle from the side of the building and slowly climbs up to the roof. For once in the movie the neon and glitz of Vegas create a beautiful backdrop to the movie's action. It helps immeasurably as well that the back-projection, sometimes surprisingly poor in a Bond movie, is actually quite well done for these scenes. After Bond enters the penthouse the nonsense with the Blofeld double ensues, but at least another satisfyingly nasty moment occurs when Bond attempts to assassinate Blofeld by firing a piton into his head. The resulting contortions as what turns out to be the double dies mark this death as one of the more graphic and disturbing in the series.
Once it is discovered that Willard Whyte is a hostage, Bond tricks Blofeld into revealing where he is being held. What follows is one of the films most memorable scenes. When viewed by an eight-year old boy it seems all neato-geato, but when viewed by a post-adolescent it comes across as just plain silly. A pair of women named Bambi and Thumper are apparently preventing Whyte from leaving the house at which he’s being kept. When Bond shows up at the house, wearing an absolutely ridiculous fat pink tie that doesn't even reach the bottom of his breast bone, the two women proceed to tumble around the room and land kicks on him. This scene is truly disappointing upon a repeat viewing. Note for example how Connery (or his stunt double) just stands immobile while one of the women slowly flips all the way across the room before getting in a kick. If Bond would just deign to move out the way of the overtly telegraphed attacks, the pair would present no real threat whatsoever. Further hurting the scene is the fact that the ladies starring are athletes, not actresses. One of the pair - the white one - remains practically mute throughout, and the black one, with her broad gestures and overly affected diction, delivers a performance that makes William Shatner look under expressive.
Bond's bizarre trip to the oil rig hideout at the end has been recounted above. The films were starting to get into a definite rut at this point, with the plot of film after film necessitating some kind of armed attack on a villain's base. The attack on the oil rig is possibly the very worst of a bad lot by being completely anti-climactic. It doesn't matter how many swivel-mounted machine guns Blofeld has on that rig, he is absolutely helpless against any kind of sustained aerial assault. The fleet of attack helicopters lead by Willard Whyte (even though he's just a civilian!) makes pretty short work indeed of the lamest secret lair in the series. And if all this weren't unexciting enough, the film also features the least satisfactory end to a major villain found in the entire franchise. Rather prematurely preparing to abandon ship, Blofeld climbs into some kind of underwater escape contraption mounted on a crane. Bond seizes control of the crane and proceeds to drop Blofeld into the water, yank him back up, and swing him through the walls of various buildings on the deck of the rig. Bond then just abandons the rig before it is blown up by the helicopters. Admittedly, it seems extremely unlikely that Blofeld could have survived the destruction of the rig, but we never see him actually bite the dust. Since Bond's most redoubtable adversary is never truly dispatched on-screen, there remains an astounding lack of closure to the 60's SPECTRE story arc that it's far to late to rectify at this extremely late date.
At least while unreasonably loyal henchmen run free, there's a chance for excitement just prior to the end scroll. Here it comes in the form of Wint and Kidd trying to pose as shipboard waiters as a prelude to killing Bond and Case. Hoping to leave a bomb disguised as a dessert (a bombe - get it!) in Bond's stateroom, they are smelled out when Bond recognizes Wint's aftershave. Bond dispatches Kidd by breaking a bottle from the serving cart and flinging the contents at Kidd. Bond must have ordered a bottle of kerosene with his dinner, because once the liquid hits Kidd and the flaming skewers he's holding his entire torso bursts into flames. This is actually fairly gruesome stuff, what with Kidd screaming in pain prior to his leaping off the boat. Wint is dispatched in a rather graphic manner himself when Bond ties the bomb to his jacket, flips him over the railing, and watches him detonate in mid-air. This final confrontation is not great, but it is reasonably good and far more interesting than much of the rest of the movie. Sadly, it still must count as a semi-botch, simply because the end to the pair was far more exciting in the book. There Bond had to climb down the outside of the ship and leap though a porthole before putting an end to them.
When discussing the disappointing Diamonds Are Forever some critics in the past have pointed to its goofiness as a precursor to the Moore era of Bond. This movie it is sometimes argued is a Moore Bond movie without Roger. While I don't deny that goofiness was a maddening feature of the Moore era, I'm not sure I agree that Diamonds Are Forever was the forerunner of the Moore Bond comedies to come. Watching this and the lamentable early Moores back to back I'm forced to conclude that as disappointing as Rog's early efforts are, there was at least a modicum of seriousness in the way the plots of the early Moores were structured. That seriousness is almost totally lacking in Diamonds Are Forever. I think that rather than seeing this film as a precursor to Moore's tenure, it is more accurate to see it as a mirror of Moore's incredibly silly final film A View To A Kill. In both instances, it seems that the producers of Bond were more interested in looking ahead than in concentrating on the task at hand. With a lead ready to leave at the end of shooting, the attitude was clearly to just slap something together prior to going home and regrouping. That attitude must have been especially easy to come into here. After all we've got Connery back so the movie has to be good right? In the end, however, it was far to much to ask of Connery to try to float this whole misbegotten mess of a screenplay and keep his rug on at the same time.
