DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) **1/2 It's a fine Bond film, highlighted by a gloriously ridiculous chase scene through the Nevada desert. Unfortunately, they noticed, and follow it with a less gloriously silly one around a Las Vegas parking lot in a Mustang Mach I (a year too late, the year they got big…I believe that Shaft drove one, too, the propaganda machine was in full effect but the lustre didn't last long). Bond films are never quite as tasteful, subtle or sophisticated as their hero. Speaking of whom…it's a typically wonderful performance from Sean Connery. I don't think it's a role that he'll be remembered for, like Dr. No, but it's an admirable entry in the Connery canon: he's into it, he plays up the big lines and carries the rest, and he is actually the one man alive who might actually be James Bond. The dramatic supervillains aren't quite as good, I mean, a grand finale on an oil rig pales somewhat in comparison to those subterranean caves and such; but Denise Perrier, Lana Wood (as Plenty O'Toole), and Jill St. John (even with an awful, if fashionable, hairdo) are serviceable Bond girls and Las Vegas an appropriate venue. Actually, that was one of my favorite parts of the film…checking out Vegas when it was still in classic formation: the Tropicana (I stayed there), the Sands, Circus Circus. Are they trying to actually say something in this film?...about Howard Hughes, or Nazis after the war, or how peaceniks can be militated? I don't think so, I think they just like trying to be interesting, and they do a good job of it.
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