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Language : English
Directed : Edward Zwick
Writing credits (WGA) : Charles Leavitt
(story and screenplay)
Cast : Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny
Archer , Djimon Hounsou as Solomon Vandy
, Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen
Review
 "Blood
Diamond" has a righteous message to get
across to its audience about how the
African diamond trade has sparked civil
war and child enslavement. But this is
the kind of film that within the opening
scenes chooses to bombard you with so
much inexplicable violence – pillaging
of villagers, human limb mutilation,
executions, forced labor – that you are
overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness
for the situation.
If you are choked by the terribleness by
all of this, then you might have
forgotten already what the film is
saying about the origins of violence,
which is that diamonds are used for the
arms trade and slave trade. The film
wants to let us know however that’s it
okay to still buy diamonds from our
local jewelers as long as we are assured
that they are “conflict-free” diamonds.
When we buy diamonds, from say Sierra
Leone, where this film takes place,
somebody likely died somewhere because
of them.
 Of
course, in this blood-soaked
entertainment disguised as a message
film, there are patented heroes.
Leonardo DiCaprio is a free-for-hire
rogue Danny Archer, and he has a big
accent (DiCaprio likes to over-pronounce
the last word at the end of every
sentence). Danny discovers that one
exceptionally valuable pink diamond has
been hidden somewhere by fisherman
Solomon (Djimon Hounsou). Solomon has
been separated from his family, and
learns that he has to buy them out of a
refugee camp. The two of them become
unlikely comrades.
As the love interest, Jennifer Connelly
is a journalist with a heart that gets
involved in Danny’s quest to reacquire
the pink diamond, hidden somewhere at a
guard-patrolled mining farm. It’s a
quest riddled with scenes of Danny and
Solomon outrunning bullets, and of
scenes of Connelly’s Maddey Bowen
growing respect for Danny, whose
intentions are sometimes hard to
interpret. Danny is a character who only
participates in danger as long as there
is a pay-out at the end of it. As Danny,
the lean but now ripped DiCaprio is
convincing enough to play these types of
roles, and he has the gravitas to make
us believe that he could survive in war
zone situations. But one has to wonder
if DiCaprio spent as much time in a
Hollywood tanning salon as he did
researching his part – his skin is
lacquered golden brown, but not blotchy
or leathered skinned as you’d expect to
see on a traveling smuggler of the
world.
 Speaking
of war zones, "Blood Diamond" as it goes
along becomes less about unfortunate
civilian deaths than it does become
about whether DiCaprio can run through
the middle of a battlefield, elude
machine gun bullets, and escape
unscathed out the other end. The last
thirty minutes of this overlong two-hour
plus film features so many action
theatrics that the film’s message
becomes buried underneath the noise.
It’s easy to forget anything that was
learned about conflict-diamonds once the
end credits roll. Our senses at that
point have become numb.
In Edward Zwick’s previous ballyhoo
qausi-prestige film "The Last Samurai,"
hero Tom Cruise became invincible
against a firestorm of machine gun
bullets and had the courage to make a
big speech before the monarch and, uh,
said something. "Blood Diamond" lacks
the same such subtlety, as it makes big
squawking statements about the
injustices of Africa, such forgotten
statements as they are. Yet amidst all
of the film’s , the film denies us the
information on what Interpol has done
with any of these ruthless diamond
mercenaries. Are these mercenaries set
free, in the name of corruption, to
continue the flow of the diamond trade
economy? Other such subject-related
questions are also easily subsided.
 One
could be glad that they received a
message about conflict diamonds from
this film, but one could easily prefer
that the message had been delivered in a
different film. A different film
entirely. This is a bloated affair with
a preoccupation to depress you more than
enlighten you. In superior films like
"Hotel Rwanda" and "The Constant
Gardener," the violence was graphic and
intense and the message heartrending,
but at least you didn’t feel like the
filmmakers were caught up solely in
creating images of the hacking and
butchering of human lives as a
storytelling cheap tactic.
MEDIA PARTNER
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