Diamonds Are Forever is the seventh film in the EON Productions James Bond series. It was the sixth and final film in the series to star Sean Connery as British Secret Service Agent, Commander James Bond. Connery would later portray Bond again in the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again in 1983.

Loosely based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli and released in 1971. It was the second of four films to be directed by Guy Hamilton.

Plot summary: In the pre-title sequence, James Bond pursues Ernst Stavro Blofeld. After interrogating several of Blofeld’s associates worldwide, Bond traces him to a facility where he is surgically creating look-alikes. Bond kills a test subject who is lying in a mud bath. Bond manages to drown the man, but is captured by Blofeld. After a fight, Bond kills Blofeld by throwing him into a pool of superheated mud.

Suspecting that South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping, and convinced that Blofeld is dead, M orders Bond to go undercover as smuggler Peter Franks and unveil the smuggling ring. Meanwhile, Blofeld’s henchmen Mr Wint and Mr Kidd systematically kill several diamond smugglers involved in the ring. Posing as Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet his contact, Tiffany Case, at her apartment where he is to pick up the diamonds. However, the real Franks shows up and tries to contact Case. Bond intercepts and kills him and sabotages the attack to make it seem like Franks is actually James Bond. The two then smuggle the diamonds to Los Angeles hiding them inside Franks’ corpse.

At the airport Bond meets his CIA ally Felix Leiter and transports the body to Slumber Inc, a funeral home where the body is cremated and the diamonds passed onto the next smuggler, Shady Tree. Bond is then almost killed by Wint and Kidd but is saved by Tree, after he discovers that Bond had purposely shipped fake diamonds. Bond tells Leiter to ship the real diamonds while he relaxes at Las Vegas where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. Then Bond discovers Tree has been killed by Wint and Kidd, who do not know that the diamonds were fake.

Later in the casino, Bond meets an opportunistic woman named Plenty O’ Toole. She cheers him on as he gambles, and, in a deleted scene, they have dinner together. She invites herself up to his room to make love, but she is quickly thrown out to the hotel pool by the smugglers already waiting in his room, who have now come for the real diamonds. They leave Bond to spend the rest of the night with Tiffany Case. In another deleted scene, Plenty returns to Bond’s room to retrieve her clothes. She sees Bond and Tiffany in bed together, and takes a card from Tiffany’s purse, later to show up at Tiffany’s house.

Tiffany tries to get Bond to reveal the location of the real diamonds by offering to help him steal the diamonds for themselves. Bond pretends to give in and arranges for her to retrieve the diamonds at the Circus Circus Las Vegas casino. At the circus, Tiffany picks up the diamonds, unaware that she is under the surveillance of Felix Leiter and his men, but she reneges her deal with Bond and flees, shipping off the diamonds to the next smuggler. When Tiffany returns to her operation residence she finds Bond waiting for her and finds the body of Plenty, who was killed when mistaken for Tiffany.

Having survived the attempt on her life, the initially reticent Tiffany tells Bond where the diamonds are. Posing as a lab worker, Bond enters the apparent destination of the diamonds – a laboratory owned by reclusive Las Vegas millionaire Willard Whyte, where he finds laser refraction specialist Professor Dr Metz constructing a satellite. He escapes by stealing a moon buggy and reunites with Tiffany in a car chase with security and the local police.

They go to a suite in the Whyte house and make love. Bond then scales the walls to the top floor of the Whyte House. Inside, he is disarmed and confronted by two identical Blofelds who are posing as Whyte using an adapted telephone to mask their voice — Bond had previously killed a look-alike. Not knowing which to kill, Bond kicks Blofeld’s cat into the arms of its owner and shoots him. However, it is revealed that the cat is also a look-alike.

Bond is rendered unconscious and then left to die inside a pipeline by Wint and Kidd. He escapes and contacts Blofeld, posing as one of Whyte’s employees and Blofeld’s right-hand man, Bert Saxby. He finds out Whyte’s location and rescues him, but in the meantime Blofeld abducts Case. With the help of Whyte, Bond raids the lab and uncovers Blofeld’s plot to create a laser satellite using the diamonds, which is now already in orbit. Blofeld destroys nuclear installations in the United States, Russia, and China, then proposes an international auction for global nuclear supremacy.

Bond identifies an oil rig off the coast of Baja California as Blofeld’s base of operations. Arriving at the rig, he switches the cassette containing the codes which control the satellite with a music tape, giving the coded one to Tiffany who is living there as a hostage. However, trying to be helpful,she re-switchs the tapes, gets caught trying to fix her mistake and is sent down to the rig. However, at this point Leiter and the CIA have already begun a heavy attack on the oil-rig and Tiffany manages to escape amidst the chaos and regroup with Bond. Blofeld tries to escape on a mini-sub, but Bond gains control of it, and crashes the sub into the control room, defeating Blofeld and destroying the satellite control along with the rest of the base.

Bond and Tiffany then head for home on a cruise ship, where Wint and Kidd also board disguised as waiters. Bond sees through their disguise, and kills them when they try to assassinate him. The film ends with Tiffany asking Bond how can they get all the diamonds from the laser satellite back down to Earth again.

See also:

• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Cast
• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Crew
• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Goofups
• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Locations
• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Soundtrack
• Diamonds Are Forever: Film - Trivia