The film is based on Ian Fleming's 1956 novel of the same name and is the second of four "James Bond" films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond impersonating a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring and soon uncovering a plot by his old enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a space-based laser weapon. Bond has to battle his enemy for one last time to stop the smuggling and stall Blofeld's plan of destroying Washington, D.C. and extorting the world with nuclear supremacy.