plug: Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
"The wine is quite excellent. Although for such a grand meal I would have expected a claret."
Welcome to today’s plug, a quick recommendation of an oft-forgotten film, cult classic, or movie that is dying to be rewatched // We send plugs every Tuesday + Thursday //
Hey so it’s Thanksgiving, which means a little James Bond is in order. I’ve loved the Bond movies since I was like 10 years old. I grew up devouring Bond marathons on cable during the holidays, and new Bond movies typically come out in November, so for me there’s an inseparable link between Bond and the holiday season.
And seein’ how there’s been a lot of reminiscing about Sean Connery lately (RIP) and a bunch of old Bond movies just dropped on streaming services, I thought I’d recommend Diamonds Are Forever — Connery’s final entry in the official franchise and, though often considered a “lesser” Bond film, one I’ve always had a soft spot for.
Diamonds Are Forever is the first Bond film of the ‘70s, proceeding Australian actor George Lazenby’s one and only turn as 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the best Bond movie and, incidentally, another great one to watch during the holidays). Connery took a then-record breaking salary to come back for one more Bond adventure before Roger Moore stepped into the role — inadvertently ushering in the high-camp, bordering-on-self-parody look and feel that defined these movies for the next decade and change.
Diamonds Are Forever has all the Bond trappings — sexy assassins, eccentric henchmen, cool cars and car chases, garish gallows humor, exotic locations, and a fabulous array of fine-tailored suits (the ’70s fashion in this movie SLAPS imo). Most of it takes place in Las Vegas, which is kind of a weird, inelegant location for a Bond movie but makes for a delightful showcase of the city as it existed in the early ‘70s. If you’re used to the Daniel Craig-era Bond films, this one may come as a surprise. It has much more in common with Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman films than it does the Daniel Craig-era Bonds, which is to say, if you’re in the mood for some outlandish retro-spy shit to glaze over you while you’re nursing a food coma or just chillin’ balls over the weekend, Diamonds Are Forever will satisfy.
Another thing that got me thinking about this movie was a tweet from Sean Fennessey after Connery’s passing last month:
It’s an important observation about Connery, who spent his post-Bond career playing everything from a Soviet Submarine captain to an immortal Egyptian/Spanish swordsman (man, Highlander is wack) to the father of Indiana Jones without breaking a sweat, nor his thick, iconic accent. And we bought it every time.
And what’s really crazy is, before he did any of that, Connery transcended his own miscasting in the role that made him a star. Here’s what I mean: I recently saw From Russia with Love, Connery’s second Bond picture, at a Drive-in and it’s wild that Diamonds Are Forever is even in the same universe, let alone the same series. It’s hard to imagine that the tall, strapping cold-war hero of From Russia with Love is this same smug, laid-back, slightly bloated spy sauntering around Las Vegas in a white dinner jacket and casually wreaking havoc at a fake-moon landing facility in the Nevada desert.
Point is, Diamonds Are Forever is a trip because it’s Sean Connery basically doing a tongue-in-cheek, Roger Moore Bond movie and crushing it. By 1971, he’s kind of in the role past his welcome, and the series is already far removed from the cold, grounded portrayal of Ian Fleming’s literary character. And yet somehow Connery still sticks the landing. What a fascinating trick for an actor to pull off by sheer force of his own charisma.
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