Diamonds Are Forever (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Shirley Bassey sings the title song, hoping to renew the kind of enthusiasm she engendered with "Goldfinger," but she has less to work with here. John Barry's familiar music is used again, but sparingly and to little advantage; often, where a scene could use the spice of musical underscoring, there is nothing. And Guy Hamilton ("Goldfinger") returns as the director, but he, too, has a less imaginative script to handle and fails to generate much excitement.

Perhaps the single biggest drawback of the film, though, is its location. After some preliminary segments in South Africa and Holland, the bulk of the story takes place in Las Vegas. The town evokes a loud, gaudy, glitzy atmosphere that rather cheapens the elegance of a Bond movie. When 007 wears a dinner jacket in a ritzy casino in Monte Carlo, he looks ultra suave and sophisticated. When he wears a dinner jacket in a tacky Las Vegas casino, he looks ridiculously out of place. Folks, believe me, there is nothing exotic about Las Vegas, and there is nothing around it but desert. It's simply not the place for the cosmopolitan Mr. Bond.

On the brighter side, however, I would point out a nifty trick with a Mustang and a one-way alley; and Bond's entrance to Whyte's penthouse riding atop an outside elevator, a sequence that will make anyone who shies away from heights a bit uneasy. Finally, some things never change: Blofeld has Bond gassed unconscious, stuffed into a huge pipe, and buried six feet deep in the desert. But don't just shoot him! Bond emerges unrumpled.

Video:
MGM's picture size for this DVD release may be the widest of all the Bond pictures: a 2.25:1 ratio. The colors are rendered quite nicely, with good definition and few or no age spots to speak of.

Audio:
The sound is a monaural typical of the series, maybe a little deeper than most. It gets the job done but will turn no heads.

Extras:
Among the bonus items on this Special 007 Edition are the usual lineup: An audio commentary with the director, Guy Hamilton, and members of the cast and crew; a thirty-minute documentary, "Inside Diamonds Are Forever," as always narrated by Patrick Macnee; a second, forty-four-minute, documentary, "Cubby Broccoli--The Man Behind Bond," chronicling the life of one of the two main forces behind the Bond franchise; four deleted scenes, rather brief and rather faded; MGM's usual eight-page informational booklet insert; thirty-two scene selections; two theatrical trailers; five TV spots; and three radio spots. English is the only spoken language, but there are French and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
"Diamonds Are Forever" sports very few gimmicks or gadgets. There's a voice synthesizer that "Q" develops and a cable-shooting pistol; that's about it, for which I would normally be thankful. But maybe this entry in the series needed something extra to lift it out of the doldrums. The movie may be purchased separately or in a boxed set that also includes "From Russia With Love," "You Only Live Twice," "Moonraker," "For Your Eyes Only," "The Living Daylights," and "The World Is Not Enough."

---

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---