It may be one of James Bond’s zanier adventures, but Diamonds Are Forever featured a deadly serious fight scene that influenced Daniel Craig’s fighting style when he went on to play the suave super-spy. With 25 films to his name including the upcoming No Time To Die, it’s fair to say that James Bond is one of cinema’s most iconic and enduringly popular action protagonists, and there are few movie characters as influential as the late Sean Connery’s original incarnation of 007.
That said, few viewers would credit the campy Diamonds Are Forever as a big influence on Layer Cake star Daniel Craig’s edgier, more down to earth version of Bond. Released in 1971, Diamonds Are Forever was the seventh Bond movie, and the sixth and last to feature Connery in the main role. It’s among his most over-the-top outings and started a trend toward goofier Bond movies after its somber predecessor, George Lazenby lone outing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This more escapist, fantastical tone was continued throughout Roger Moore’s tenure in the role until Timothy Dalton (and his short-lived Miss Moneypenny) took the character in a more grounded direction.
However, despite its largely light tone, Diamonds Are Forever does feature one standout sequence that has cast an unexpectedly long shadow over Craig’s darker iteration of Bond. Since his screen debut in 2006’s Casino Royale, much has been made of the debt Daniel Craig’s 007 owes to Jason Bourne. His evident PTSD symptoms from years of service, as well as his stern demeanor and particularly his brutal, no-holds-barred fighting style, are all at least partially inspired by the iconic post-9/11 spy cinema antihero. But a rewatch of Connery’s final Bond movie shows that the late actor’s version of Bond surprisingly predicted Craig’s fighting style to a tee. Despite the surrounding movie featuring goofy, fun Bond elements such as the infamous Bond girl moniker “Plenty O’Toole” and Blofeld’s campy pair of henchmen, one early fight sequence sees Bond batter diamond smuggler Peter Franks to death in a manner that perfectly mirrors Craig’s pragmatic, close-contact fighting style.
Utilizing an elevator grate and a fire extinguisher to snuff out Franks, Connery’s Bond is vicious and realistically desperate in a surprisingly prescient sequence whose fight choreography has a clear influence on Craig’s version of the character. It’s a scene that feels out of place in the over-the-top milieu of Diamonds Are Forever, whose winking sense of humor and more over-the-top moments call to mind Austin Powers. In particular, the jaw-dropping scene wherein Bond enquires whether “the curtains match the drapes” to his latest conquest is worthy of Mike Myers’ silliest moments in character, which makes the gritty, lengthy Franks fight sequence all the more surprising in context.
Despite the silliness and lighthearted tone of the surrounding movie, there’s no denying that the simply staged and brutally effective Peter Franks fight sequence from Diamonds Are Forever had an outsized influence on Craig’s James Bond, who has relied on similarly bone-crunching physicality in every outing from Casino Royale to 2015’s Spectre.
