Diamonds Are Forever

James Bond opens the film hunting Ernst Stavro Blofeld in revenge for the murder of his wife Tracy. He tracks Blofeld to a facility where lookalike doubles are being manufactured, kills a test subject, and apparently eliminates Blofeld himself. Back in London, MI6 learns that South African diamonds are being systematically diverted and stockpiled — not resold — suggesting someone is manipulating the global diamond market. M assigns Bond to infiltrate the smuggling pipeline. Bond assumes the identity of professional smuggler Peter Franks and travels to Amsterdam to rendezvous with his contact, the sharp and resourceful Tiffany Case. The real Peter Franks arrives and Bond kills him, planting his own identity papers on the corpse to stage his own death. Bond and Tiffany carry the diamonds — concealed inside the body — to Los Angeles, where Bond meets CIA liaison Felix Leiter before heading to Las Vegas. The diamonds are delivered to a funeral home connected to the smuggling ring, where they pass to small-time comedian Shady Tree. The funeral home's operator, Morton Slumber, betrays Bond, and the assassin duo Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd attempt to cremate Bond alive. Tree intervenes when he discovers the diamonds are fakes — Bond and the CIA had swapped them. At a Las Vegas casino Bond meets Plenty O'Toole; Slumber's thugs throw her from a hotel window into the pool below. Tiffany collects the real diamonds at the Circus Circus casino but initially flees with them. Shaken by O'Toole's murder, she relents and helps Bond track the diamonds to casino manager Bert Saxby, who passes them to a scientist and onward to a high-security research laboratory apparently operated by reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte. Bond infiltrates the lab, is captured, escapes via a lunar rover prototype, and reconnects with Tiffany. Forcing his way into Whyte's penthouse, Bond finds not Whyte but two identical Blofeld doubles using voice-synthesis technology to impersonate the billionaire remotely. Bond kills one double, is gassed unconscious, and is dumped inside a pipeline to die. He escapes, turns Blofeld's own voice-synthesizer against him, tricks the villain into revealing Whyte's actual desert hideout, defeats the guards, and rescues Whyte. Blofeld has already abducted Tiffany. Bond now learns the full scope of Blofeld's plan: the smuggled diamonds have been used to power a space-based laser satellite now in orbit. Blofeld uses it to destroy nuclear weapons installations in the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, then offers the world's governments an auction for immunity — nuclear blackmail on a planetary scale. Whyte pinpoints Blofeld's control base as an oil rig off Baja California. Bond attempts to swap the satellite's control cassette but is caught, leaving Leiter and the CIA to launch a helicopter assault on the rig. Blofeld tries to flee by midget submarine; Bond commandeers the crane controlling the sub's launch and uses the vessel as a battering ram to demolish the control room and destroy the base. Blofeld's fate is left ambiguous. Returning home by ocean liner, Bond and Tiffany are ambushed by Wint and Kidd, who have infiltrated as room-service waiters carrying a booby-trapped cake. Bond recognizes the ruse, overpowers them, sets Kidd ablaze, and throws Wint overboard still clutching the bomb, which detonates beneath the waves. As the couple relax on deck, Tiffany wonders aloud whether they could retrieve the diamonds still in orbit.

Sources: Wikipedia, OMDb