Movie Notes: Blood Diamond

November 29th, 2007

= 4 stars

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connely, Djimon Hounsou
Directed by Edward Zwick

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Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a cynical diamond smuggler who meets photojournalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly). They get involved with Sierra Leone native Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) whose family has been torn apart by rebels. The diamonds are sold to fund the violence - the specific conflict is the Sierra Leone civil war of 1999.

Solomon is put to work searching for diamonds in a river when he finds an extremely large one. A sudden attack causes him to bury the diamond in the dirt before he is taken prisoner. The rest of the film documents his effort to find the diamond and reunite his family, with Danny and Maddy’s help.

The film is less thriller than morality lecture, and draws unmistakably direct lines between the senseless killing to ignorant shoppers buying diamonds in a fancy London store. It’s similar to Traffic which also wagged a finger of shame in the general direction of insatiable, immoral demand in the first world.

I can’t say I’m a Leonardo DiCaprio fan, but he filled this demanding action guy surprisingly well, despite a sometimes goofy accent. Djimon Hounsou is solid as always. Jennifer Connelly’s character provides a needed moral center, although she gets a bit preachy at times.

Essentially, the message of Blood Diamond is that the rest of the world constantly deals with the undesirable after effects of the ridiculous stuff we consume. There are no easy answers. But a start is education, and that begins with watching a film like this one.

IMDB: Blood Diamond
Wikipedia: Blood Diamond
Rotten Tomatoes: Blood Diamond