Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Connery’s back! After Lazenby’s attack of ego / poor management advise-inspired decision to turn down a contract for several more Bond movies, Connery steps back into the role after having a metric fucktonne of money thrown at him to persuade him to do so. But now the first Bond has returned to the role, will the movie sparkle as brightly as the titular diamonds?
Pre-Existing Prejudices: Well it’s partly set in Amsterdam, where I currently (though not for long) live, so it’ll be interesting to see a fellow Scot floating up the familiar canals, I guess. And though I don’t think I’ve ever seen this from start to finish (maybe I did when I was a boy, but I certainly don’t recall it) I do know it has a fairly poor reputation in the wider world, and alongside Amsterdam, is partly set in Vegas. Hmm.
The Actual Movie:
Connery’s back in the gun barrel opening, and it’s the proper, non plinky-plonky version of the theme! This immediately feels like a return to form. Hold on a Japanese paper wall for just a couple of seconds, before an Asian henchperson flies through it. “Where is he?” we here
that voice ask. Cairo we’re told then we already get the first pun of the movie – “Hit me!” at the card table while Bond punches the hapless lackey out. Then Connery’s back on screen and, “Bond,– James Bond” gets trotted out. But like Lazenby in the last film they hold back the Bond reveal, rather than having him on-screen from the first moment. “There’s something I’d like you to get off your chest,” he declares as he pulls the bikini top off a woman on the beach and tries to strangle her with it. Connery’s steel is immediately apparent – it's tough to imagine Lazenby pulling this off – then we’re off to yet another bloody Blofeld, who’s now apparently doing something with plasic surgery and doubles. As Bond creeps into his base, there’s a henchperson / soon-to-be-Blofeld copy hiding in some mud. Out comes a gun, then he’s drowned, not especially convincingly, in the mud. Connery’s got some grey, a poor toupee and a bit more weight than the last time we saw him that’s for sure, but he’s delivering the goods fine here.
Blofeld then swans in to explain a bit of plot, and actually tells people to kill Bond, which makes a refreshing change. There’s a bit of a fight, Bond bests him, then Blofeld is strapped to a gurney and sent plunging into a pit of mud so it looks like he’s actually a goner then…
Oh look (well, listen), Shirley Bassey is back as well!
So with the opening credits out of the way, we’re in London having some diamonds explained at us– in case the theme song wasn’t clear enough – then we get a lengthily exposition scene about mining. Connery’s slid back into the role pretty easily, it has to be said. We get some diamond scenes with black guys stealing stuff from mines while we are told about how the industry prides itself on the security measures it takes, which is presumably meant to be ironic but instead makes it look like the film is portraying all black people as thieves. Cut to – the first appearance of Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, stealing the diamonds from the mine, as they first kill the courier via scorpion (down the back of the guy’s shirt), then blow up a helicopter after handing over a dummy package. There’s crappy day-for-night shooting here, but the direction is pretty solid, then off they go hand in hand after their nefarious tasks have been completed. Then the action moves to a school with “Mrs Whistler” getting the diamonds from Kidd and Windt, and she informs them she will need to go to Amsterdam, (the smuggled diamonds are hidden in a bible!) then we cut back to London – this all happens pretty quickly, so there’s a sense of pace here that’s doing the movie some favours.
So Bond is to take the place of the actual diamond courier and go undercover, the original Mr Peter Franks being diverted via Moneypenny in disguise (well, at least she got out of the office). You can tell its 1971 because they are making a big deal out of the fact it’s a hovercraft Bond is getting on. And then we’re in Amsterdam, watching tourist boats that are still in service today going up and down the Amstel, and a house I used to live in is visible in the background (this is, I concede, not strictly relevant to the film). Mrs Whistler is pulled out of the water, dead, as Wint and Kidd watch on. They’re certainly getting through their victims, aren’t they? Then Connery’s into a canal house, and we find out that the T Case on the door stands for Tiffany Case, which is… not a great, and for the first time its obvious that Connery isn’t trying a leg (during the “if the collars and cuffs match” scene). He’s never been so obviously uninterested in being in a scene, and has zero rapport with Ms Case, though he gets one good line - “that’s quite a nice little nothing you’re almost wearing”. She gets his fingerprint off a drinks glass, and compares with Peter Franks, in a failed attempt to pretend she’s anything other than a prop in this movie. Bond works out she’s checking up on him but lets it ride. Tiffany explains the plot – smuggle diamonds into LA – then a quick call to Q to explain that the original has escaped. Bond does a fair Dutch “goeden avond” then there’s a fight scene in an elevator, which actually isn’t badly done, and again benefits from no music until the end, just two people fighting in a confined space. Connery seems more engaged here too – it’s not
From Russian With Love, but its also not bad. Here the bad guy is defeated…by fire extinguisher. That’s something… Bond puts his own ID in Mr Frank’s pocket, fooling Tiffany that “Franks” has killed Bond, then we’re off to LA, though we’re shown Wint and Kidd on the same flight, in case we were in any way worried we’d seen the last of them.
And alongside Yet Another Blofeld, we have Yet Another Felix Leiter (no screen presence, could be literally anyone), who helps get Bond through customs – the guy Bond killed in the elevator is being transported as his brother, with the diamonds inside him. Like you do. We get very bad gangster accents – “wanna sit in the front, Mr Franks?” – and the hearse takes off for an extremely gauche funeral parlour. It’s hard to say if this is tongue in cheek – the crassness of America being contrasted with Bond’s more debonair approach – or being played for laughs, or meant to be taken straight, as the coffin with the corpse and diamonds slides into the incinerator. Bond is then brought the urn with diamonds inside. Mr Slumber is the name of the funeral home, and indeed the name of the person in charge, though curiously he doesn’t have an American accent. Bond drops off the diamonds, gets the money, then gets knocked out by Wint and Kidd. Then it’s Bonds turn to face the incinerator doors, stuffed into a coffin. For only the second time this movie there’s actually some tension here. But Bond is pulled out in the nick of time when it turns out the diamonds are fake, and the real ones need to be tracked down. To be honest I’m getting fed up hearing about these diamonds…
Then we’re off too Vegas, baby! It’s all astonishingly tacky. Bond looks conspicuously out of place, and not in a good way – the production seems to think he’ll slide right in, but the casinos of Vegas are not all tuxes and sophistication, they’re tat and out of town pensioners. So we get a bit of a borsht-belt comedian’s act, and then he’s dead and we are off to the tables where Bond meets another not-exactly-leading-lady, though the line from her “I’m Plenty O’Toole” is followed by “named after your father, perhaps?” and manages to be genuinely funny. This all feels very inconsequential, though its fairly traditional, as she takes him up to the room, and the three wildly unconvincing gangsters from the hearse are there. She gets thrown out a window and lands in a swimming pool (“I didn’t know there was a pool down there” the person who throws her out dryly observes), then they leave and… ohh Ms Case is here. They talk diamonds then Bond is moved to observe “I’m the condemned man and you’re the hearty breakfast”. She offers him a 50/50 split, after which they plan their escape.
And then they are off to the circus, where the diamonds are apparently hidden. I do not care about these diamonds any more, because beyond the fact they’re diamonds, and so worth something, the film has done nothing to explain why all this is really necessary. Tiffany is at a card table (where she gets given a card by a black croupier which reads, “why don’t you play the water balloons?”) but this all looks so very, very cheap and tacky, with the slot machines and everything else. And an elephant wins at the slots, lest you think it was all getting too serious... Tiffany wins a stuffed toy at the water balloon stand, which has the bloody diamonds in them, then a black woman is turned into a gorilla, which certainly isn’t racist at all. Oh no. Well I say a gorilla, what I mean is a man in a not-great gorilla costume. Then she gives them the slip as Bond waits at the rental place (HERTZ!!! In very large letters, so we have a fair idea of who’s sponsoring this outing).
Off to Tiffany’s (we assume?) villa, Ms O’Toole is dead in the pool and the charade is dropped. She knows he’s not Franks, he asks for the goods. Then to the airport, and the Whyte House hotel is explained to us. Ok we’re at a gas station and… oh who cares? The film is just spinning its wheels now. Bond has sneaked into the back of a van. Woo? We drive up to W Tectronics then the van gets taken down in a van lift (?), because that’s a thing. Still following the toy Tiffany won in the suitcase. Bond bluffs his way in fine, and gets a radiation tag (yes radiation, you can’t be too careful about radiation! Radiation you say? Yes, radiation! We get this a lot – from G Section!). Connery’s quite good at doing the light-hearted comedy stuff here while annoying some people in a lab – better than he’s been in a while, actually, because prior to this he’s mostly stood there and just said the lines. But he’s discovered, then we get a weird sequence on a faked moon – why are the “astronauts” working there moving in slow motion? - and Bond tries to flee in a lunar escape pod. What the hell is this (other than stupid)? Bond makes his getaway in the lunar vehicle while various cars and trikes find driving in a straight line impossible. The celeste on the soundtrack providing the incidental music is terrible – intrusive and tension-sapping, not that there’s a lot of tension to be had as Bond trundles unimpressively about the desert landscape. Eventually Bond abandons the lunar vehicle and grabs a trike… well OK sure – then meets up with Tiffany. who make their escape while a trike wobbles to an unconvincing stop. Dreadful.
Then we’re back in Vegas, on the strip, and Bond is pulled over by the cops. The Sherriff does a terrible double take as Bond simply reverses away from him, and we get another sluggish chase which would be substantially improved by the
Police Squad! theme being played over it. This might actually be the worst chase in a Bond movie so far, even though its long and obviously well put together (it doesn’t feel like it watching it) and it goes on for fucking ever. This might have been one occasion where blasting the Bond theme would have added something, because what we get is about as far from exciting as it’s possible to get, what with all that driving-round-a-car-park business. But they make their escape with a reasonable stunt at least. And, having made that escape, they’re off to the bridal suite, which is so unbelievably vulgar it looks like something Liberace would turn his nose up at. Bond hitches a ride on an elevator up the side of the building (a decent idea, it seems, because we’ll see it again in
Skyfall, though Connery’s on top of the elevator rather than Craig dangling beneath it). Bond levers himself on to the roof (those ropes deserve an award), sneaks in and enters the room where all the equipment for spying on the casino is. But he’s been expected, and finally we get to meet Mr Whyte and his understated steel-décor pad and it’s… Blofeld. How terribly exciting. By which I mean predictable. Turns out it was just a double that was killed, in the least surprising twist ever. Blofeld says science was never his strong suite, which… surely isn’t true? Wasn’t he engineering a virus that could target specific species to wipe them out in the last movie?
The plot is explained to us – Blofeld has replaced the reclusive Whyte because nobody will miss someone who’s already missing, and has a voice-changer to make him sound like the original over the telephone – and he’s taken over operations. There’s two Blofeld’s here, the original and a double, and actually that’s quite well handled. Ohh look, there’s two white cats as well- and one of them is kicked into a Blofeld, who’s then shot in the head with a grappling gun. Of course it’s the double that’s killed. The diamonds – those damned diamonds - are put in a safe, then Bond is gassed in an elevator and at the mercy of our favourite assassins, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, returning to the movie. Bond is slung inelegantly into the boot of a car– you don’t see that shade of brown for cars any more, and for good reason. They’re back in the desert – great… Bond is put in a pipe (there’s a laying pipe gag there somewhere…). The pipe is to be buried the next morning – this must count as the stupidest JUST SHOOT HIM ALREADY moment yet, because of course Bond escapes, whereas Blofeld could have just pulled the trigger the previous night. I mean, how did they weld the pipe shut without someone noticing him in there? Sigh. Bond gets out of the pipe, then Bond does the change-the-voice thing to get Blofeld to reveal where Whyte is actually being kept. Number of fucks given? Zero.
Nice house Mr Whyte lives in. Very modernist, and all done in white concrete. Yup, it got to the point where I need to praise architecture. But here we get to meet Bambi and Thumper. We get a decently staged fight scene where the two women actually seem capable of doing their own stunts, and Connery has never looked older than when getting beaten up by two lithe female assassins about half his age. Then he’s thrown in the pool and only then is he able to get the advantage, just in time for Felix (remember he’s in the movie?) to turn up too late. They get to meet Whyte at long last, and then there’s a bit of sniper action. Not exciting. Back to the casino and even Q is playing the slots here – which to be honest just feels wrong, even though he’s winning. Tiffany’s trying to get him to put in a good word for her, he’s over explaining a gadget, then she’s kidnapped by Blofeld in drag. Who didn’t see
that coming? Now Whyte is at the underground lab and the thing that was being built before has been launched and stolen. Something’s taken over the guidance systems – Blofeld is in charge! Turns out the diamonds we’ve been following all movie were for a space laser – the special effects here are a
lot better than
You Only Live Twice, which is something. The laser blows up a missile in North Daktoa. Then a Russian sub – or at least a bathtub model of one – is destroyed as well. The some Chinese rockets! Blofeld’s back at the ransom game. Then we find out they were nuclear weapons, but it’s not really tense, as such.
So last movie we had an elegant base sitting gracefully atop the Swiss Alps, and this time out we’re off to the international glamour of… an oil rig! Blofed gets a bit of exposition, then Bond is dropped out of a plane in a big silver foil golf ball thing and is winched on board. Tiffany is sunbathing on the oil rig, which they somehow try to convince us is perfectly normal. Then we get another scene between Blofeld and Bond, but there’s absolutely no sense of threat between them, as in the last film – it’s all very avuncular. Neither seems very concerned with the situation. Blofeld over-explains things about the tape, and there’s something very sweet about the fact that the super-laser is controlled by cassette. Bond substitutes the tape, but he’s not having a good day and cant even escape from a couple of henchpeople. Tiffany switches the tape which was already switched, so the original is back. D’oh! Meanwhile a released weather balloon tells Felix its time to send in the troops via helicopter, while Bond is locked in a cupboard full of stuff. The copters sweep in and open fire on the rig. Tiffany, about whom nobody cares, is caught trying to switch the tapes yet again, and is taken to be locked up, but her guard is handily killed by the strafing copters. Bond, who has been locked up in a room with a bloody big escape hatch in the floor, exits via a big rope and makes his way along the underside of the rig as the attack continues. Blofeld has his “battle sub” prepared – it’s a cheap prop that’s then hoisted into the water, but conveniently not shot down by the attacking helicopters. But before he can be lowered completely into the water Bond takes the controls of the crane and has some fun swinging him about. Tiffany finds Bond at the crane controls, gets a gun and open fires, the recoil sending her off the edge of the rig. She really is staggeringly useless – this is being played for laughs at the exact moment you shouldn’t be playing something for laughs. Then Bond damages the rig by swinging the battle sub about a bit, and jumps off after her. Some big explosions, Blofeld’s fate is uncertain, etcetera etcetera.
Then Bond is, apparently, sailing back to London on a big cruise ship, but ohh Windtt and Kidd are on the boat as well. Bond and Tiffany are reclining on loungers while the two assassins bring in a meal, with a windy-up bomb in the desert of “bombe surprise”. For the first and only time in the movie Bond seems to work something out, he identifies Wint’s aftershave, having smelled it before, and works out something is wrong. The whole “Mouton Rothschild is a claret” is well done, but Tiffany’s reaction to being attacked by lethal assassins is a high-pitched “eeee!”. For fuck’s sake. Mr Kidd on fire before going over the side of the boat is a good stunt (Mr Wint getting pulled between the legs then flipped overboard not so much), and so the day is saved. But Tiffany is right when she asks “how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?”, literally the only intelligent thing she’s asked in the whole film. Well, better late than never I suppose…
In Conclusion:
Diamonds Are Forever has two very clear things going for it over
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – Connery, even though visibly slumming it, is still miles better than Lazenby, and it’s noticeably better produced and directed than it’s predecessor. Other than that, though,
Diamonds Are Forever is pretty tough to defend as a movie. Certainly there are some aspects to it that make sense in terms of what a Bond film might want to achieve, so there’s a bit of space action, but it’s massively toned down from
You Only Live Twice, there’s some casino action, because Bond works in that kind of setting, there’s a big-value McGuffin in the diamonds, because that gives Bond something concrete to be pursuing while unaware of a bigger picture unfolding out of sight, and so on. Those all make sense, and they’re all workable as a part of a Bond movie, but somehow even though these are good, reliable parts of a plot engine, every single one of them falls flat. The giveaway here is the casinos – we’ve seen Bond in casinos before, but they’ve always been in the real glamour of old Europe, gambling in London or Paris or Monte Carlo. Vegas, by comparison, looks cheap and ersatz, and never once convinces as a location into which Bond should be placed.
Maybe, had this been the height of the Rat Pack days of the 50’s, Bond could have worked in that environment, and indeed Connery looks like he’d fit in rather well sharing drinks and dames with Sinatra or Martin. But in the faded, lacklustre early days of the 70’s those times are
long gone. It just all looks so
cheap, as if going to America was enough, so nobody had to try too hard. And every character in the U.S. has an accent from a fictional part of the South that makes everyone sound like Foghorn Leghorn, except for three “gangsters” who appear to be auditioning for a role in
The Untouchables. It’s dreadful, and it makes anything that happens in America impossible to take seriously.
Connery isn’t helping much, either. Up until now he’s been pretty reliable – fading a bit in conviction towards the end of his run, but still basically great at playing the role. But here there’s big holes in his performance – he looks startlingly bored and unengaged during his first scene in Amsterdam with Tiffany, but then there’s no scene he plays with her when he looks like he cares about what’s going on. This is incredibly frustrating, because there’s a few moments which prove beyond doubt that he’s still got it – the odd moments when he’s able to bring the steel, like the elevator fight in the canal house, really convince, which is unfortunate as the fight is bookended by two scenes where he doesn’t try a leg. Would a more convincing performance from Connery have saved the movie? No, because there’s not enough here to be worth saving, but it certainly would have made things seem a bit more… well, credible is probably overstating it, but believable perhaps. This is without a doubt Connery’s worst performance in the role, even though there’s a few moments – like the comedy in the underground lab where Bond bluffs playing an annoying technician – that shows he can still find a few new nooks and crannies to explore with the character. Still, it’s not like he’s the only one struggling – Jill St John is simply awful as Tiffany, and Charles Gray makes for a wildly unconvincing Blofeld. No, actually, that’s not fair. Telly Savalas, in the last movie, was the only time Blofeld has really seemed like he was in any way a real character and not A Big Movie Bad Guy, finally seeming threatening and dangerous in a way that the character never had up to that point. The avuncular, charming approach that Gray delivers
could conceivably work, but it would only really work if Gray had played Blofeld across all of the Bond movies to date. Then the Holmes/Moriarty or Doctor/Master relationship this movie tries to set up could actually function – two adversaries bound together by previous encounters and mutual respect but complete loathing. Gray does that kind of thing rather well, and Connery’s not a bad foil for it, but it’s far, far too much work for a movie as slight as this one to deliver on, so it ends up feeling inconsequential and rather more like neither Bond nor Blofeld really care if one stops the other. If they don’t seem to care whether Bond succeeds or fails, why should we?
And those diamonds. Those bloody diamonds. By about a third of the way through the movie it’s already impossible to care about what happens to them, so this is the one time that tipping the audience off as to what they’re really for would have worked, or at the very least made the central McGuffin easier to invest in. Had we known that Bond was pursuing the diamonds because they were part of a super-weapon that could change the balance of power in the world there would be at least some tension as he got nearer to acquiring them, only to have them frustratingly slip out of his grasp once more, as the threat of a terrorist getting his hands on a super-weapon draws ever nearer. Instead what we have is Bond on a mission even
he deems inconsequential, and you have to imagine the British government must have something more productive to have him spend his time on. Then, oh it all turns out to be Blofeld anyway, and we’re squarely back to the most predictable of stories imaginable. As a central conceit to centre the movie around, the diamonds just don’t do it. The movie could maybe have made this work, if
Diamonds Are Forever had been structured more like a Bond road movie, with him flitting from one place to another in his pursuit of the gems. But because the film is so committed to delivering the structure of a traditional Bond movie, we get a big action set-piece every so often and the potential road-movie vibe grinds to a halt while we get ten minutes of stunt-work. The one time this does work is the cut from London to Amsterdam to America, which all happens snappily and with a good sense of pace – indeed the first twenty minutes or so are the best the film ever is – but it all fades away in the bleached desert of Nevada, and this potential strand simply evaporates.
So is there anything to recommend here? In truth, not a lot. There’s an irrelevance built in to
Diamonds Are Forever that’s never existed in any previous Bond movie – there’s just a sense here that absolutely nothing we’re watching ever matters, even though a few bits of it are sporadically (often
very sporadically) entertaining. Even
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is completely ignored here, felt like it mattered more than this rubbish. Actually it’s worth mentioning that just a little, because when last we saw Bond, he was crushed at the death of his one true love. Here? Not so much of a mention of it –
Diamonds Are Forever completely ignores the events of
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though that’s probably the right choice, given that Tracy’s death happened to Lazenby rather than Connery. It’s still a little peculiar to hear Moneypenny asking Bond to bring her back a “diamond? In the shape of a ring?” when he asks her what she’d like him to bring back from Holland, but whatever. The film isn’t interested in those kind of serialized details, and makes no effort to engage the viewer in them either. The hold back on the reveal of Connery in the opening couple of minutes is delivered in the same way Lazenby’s reveal is held back in
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which again feels like the right choice, allowing Connery’s voice to deliver the role first, before finally showing the man himself. But this is a rare example of restraint and thought in a film that seems to have little use for either.
Diamonds Are Forever is tacky, slight, cheap and dreary – and it’s a poor finale for the most iconic of all Bonds. Connery deserved a better exit than this.
What Percentage Of This Film Could Be Cut?
It’s a tough one to judge this time out, because
all of it feels pretty inconsequential, and I can’t go for 100%, can I? The problem is that everything here is pitched very much at one level, so the bits that are disposable aren’t noticeably different to the bits which are actually relevant to the story. Other than as a set-up, the trip to Amsterdam achieves very little, but cutting it would kind of be a shame, partly because of the slight road-movie vibe and partly because there’s slight sense that this might actually made a good location for some extended Bond shenanigans. Having him racing up and down canals escaping bad guys or chasing diamonds sounds a lot more interesting than hanging out in tawdry casinos in Nevada. But that’s not what we have, so fine, let’s lose Amsterdam, and alongside it the whole stupid moon-buggy chase, and some of the exposition. I reckon that’s maybe
20%, though in truth you could probably make a fairly efficient 45-minute episode of TV from the material here and not notice that anything especially significant was missing.
Quip Level:
Starts high, falls away, then the film rather runs away with itself, rocketing them up as things go on. It becomes pretty relentless, as if the script keeps trying to throw in one pun or quip after another as often as possible to try and hide the fact other bits aren’t really working well. For the first time, I’m awarding
Shoutbox Would Be Ashamed Of This. That is some seriously strong punning.
2017 Cringe Factor:
Gah. This is the hardest film yet to judge for this section, because it’s genuinely progressive to have Mr Wint and Mr Kidd as actually-gay, not “ohh they maybe could be”-gay, and there are
very few Bond films which feel genuinely progressive. Both characters are unambiguously homosexual
and apparently in a stable happy relationship together, and for a 1971 mainstream film which takes huge pride in the machismo of its lead, that’s properly good. And what’s more the film doesn’t look down on them for it or contrast them as inferior next to Bond, and indeed they’re shown to be highly proficient at what they do – yes Bond defeats them in the end, but then again Bond defeats
everyone in the end, and it’s only when they come up directly against the star of the movie they’re found to be wanting. And (one high-pitched squeal aside), they don’t really tip over into stereotype. Bambi and Thumper, equally, could be read easily as lesbians, though this is less clear, but either way this is good stuff (and the fact that Bambi and Thumper are mixed race is a real bonus as well). On the other hand, other than Thumper, every single person of colour is either serving in a casino or, in the opening exposition, shamelessly stealing diamonds, which is at best tone-deaf, and at worst demonstrates an almost reflexive distrust and/or dismissal of anyone who isn’t basically white. It’s deeply uncomfortable, and that’s before we mention the black woman that’s turned into a gorilla at the circus (this was a real trick, done with mirrors and projections, that used to be performed in places like Coney Island, but that doesn’t make its inclusion any more forgivable). There’s also a few bits of lady-slapping from Bond, which is done once too often to excuse as “he treats everyone the same way” (because in this film he definitely doesn’t). And Tiffany, who’s the second lead, is feeble character - light-years away from the progressive, intelligent and self-reliant Tracy in the last movie, we’re here treated to what everyone thinks of when they think of a typical Bond girl – pretty, dumb, ineffective and with a stupid name. I’m going to go for an
Oh Dear… because it’s bang in the middle of our five ratings - the progressive bits are properly impressive and the retrograde stuff is genuinely terrible.
The Connery Movies, RankedBarring
Never Say Never Again, which we’ll get to in due course, that’s it for Connery in the role, so here’s his movies, ranked.
From Russia With Love – Cold War thrills, a makes-sense plot, a terrific adversary in Rosa Klebb, and Connery’s best performance in the role bar none. The unquestioned champion of the Connery years, and just a straight-up brilliant espionage movie, even without the Bond pedigree. Brilliant.
Goldfinger – There’s a lot of flaws in
Goldfinger, but the film is imbued with so much of its own energy and commitment to what it is that it’s able to overcome almost all of its problems to deliver a resounding movie. The best baddie of the Connery years and a great turn by Honour Blackman make this pretty great/inescapable.
Dr No – A solid, steady start to the Bond series. The plot isn’t necessarily much to write home about but Connery excels at bringing Bond to life, and convinces in the role from his first second on screen. The pacing’s a little lax, but this is a decent and reliable start.
(
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – A good film hidden inside a not-very-good film,
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service just doesn’t quite come together well enough. Lazenby’s not a great, or even good, Bond, and the production is unusually poor, but Tracy is a fantastic character, and Savalas’s turn as Blofeld is the best the character will ever be. Frustratingly incomplete.)
You Only Live Twice – Two-thirds of a great movie, and one-third of a fucking terrible one,
You Only Live Twice just doesn’t know when to quit. When it’s good it really shows off how this kind of larger-than-live Bond movie can work, and when it doesn’t we have Bond in slanty-eye make-up. Schizophrenic.
Diamonds Are Forever – Better than
Thunderball simply by dint of being about a quarter of an hour shorter. Bond has never looked so chintzy and irrelevant, we have the worst Bond girl to date, and a plot that just can’t be bothered to get started until about twenty minutes from the closing credits. The best thing here is Shirley Bassey.
Thunderball – Tedious, dreary underwater antics that go nowhere slowly, a buttock-achingly long running time, a first half hour that could be done in five minutes, and little to nothing of consequence.
Diamonds Are Forever might be incoherent rubbish, but this commits an ever greater sin – it’s boring.
The Bonds, Ranked1. Connery
2. Lazenby
Surprise, right?
