Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

I watched this movie on Amazon Prime.

So... I had seen some of the older Bond movies, including this one, a long long time ago. Like about 20 years ago, renting them from the Library as a kid. Most of them I hardly remembered but I wanted to finally start my journey of going back and watching all the old Bond movies again. Some a long over due re watch, others seeing for the first time.

Diamonds marks the first return of Connery to the role of Bond after previously stepping away before Majesty was filmed, prompting George Lazenby to be cast. However that turned out detrimental to the franchise with the film having a bad reception. While they were scrambling to try and recast a new actor as Bond again, they convinced Connery to come back and do the role once more (and paid him handsomely for it).
Here Connery's age is really starting to show and shockingly so. It's only been 4 years since he did Live Twice and to me it looks like he's aged '10 to 15 years.

Anyways. This film gets kinda goofy and is an early look at what the Moore era would start feeling like but yet with Connery in the lead and feels miss matched. It's not terrible but I still put this in the, it's OK camp. Actually better than Live Twice, but it's kinda just... meh for me.
I hear a lot of praise for the minions, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint... but I don't really get the love for them. Sure they're kinda fun, but not so amazing.
We also have again yet another recast of Blofeld... and this movie does him the worst. Blofeld I think is his most idiotic in this movie and just plain stupid. And strangely enough Blofeld's new actor already played a big part in a previous Bond film which can be distracting. However the whole plastic surgery angle and sub plot of the movie can help explain this away. Though there's little actually done with that.

The car chase in the movie with the Mustang and the police is terrible though. And I'm never a fan of movies depicting police as incapable idiots. It's insulting. Bond's car is pretty sick though, and I think the same model my dad's used to be.

We also don't really get a satisfying pay off to how Majesty ended, at least not really. A squandered opportunity. That said, I still like the movie OK. Not exactly sure why but I still found enjoyment out of it. More so than Live Twice anyways.
So a good 3 out of 5 stars.

Mistake Status: I was planning on only doing the Brosnan films down the road. But my recent watch of Live and Let Die and finding a few mistakes in that... has changed my mind and I may do the whole franchise at some point. At the very least I'll do time code clean ups, and do pictures for existing mistakes and trivia. No idea when I'll get to that.

Quantom X ★