Blood Diamond
While not exactly a shining postcard designed to promote tourism to the continent of Africa, the most notable aspect of Edward Zwick’s film is the stunning maturation of Leonardo DeCaprio as an actor. As Danny Archer, diamond smuggler and mercenary, DiCaprio proves that he’s miles ahead of his bland pretty boy from Titanic. With this and The Departed, he proves that he’s becoming more and more adept at playing gritty and rough-hewn roles and is arguably second only to Depp at immersing himself completely in a character. However, he is almost matched step for step acting-wise by Dijmon Hounsou as the simple fisherman who gets caught up in the civil war in his home country. Scenes such as confronting his son at gunpoint and his violent showdown with a rebel leader proves he is a talent to be reckoned with. The film gets caught up with having too much story, causing almost a dragging pace at times, and the spectacle of having nearly every other scene end in ambush after ambush starts to get repetitive and wear out the viewer. On the other hand, Jennifer Connolly, with more fire in her eyes than usual, does fine as the American reporter covering the conflict (and gets out a nice pointed barb at then-President Bill Clinton about how he was more concerned with covering up his sexual misdeeds than worry about what was going on in the world), while Arnold Vosloo continues to show why he’s an underrated character actor in the role of a mercenary Colonel and Archer’s mentor. Zwick stages some truly brutal action sequences that, while not as visceral as the fourth Rambo film, makes one really wonder why people in a certain area of the world are so quick to kill each other when something of value is mined in their region. Hounsou himself even ponders that question, but the only real message to viewers is to make sure not to buy so-called “conflict diamonds” when shopping for expensive jewelry. It is also a shock to see the African rebels indoctrinate children into their army and train and hone them to kill without remorse, including when a key character is shot by a couple of ten-year-olds. In the end, I could have done without the prolonged death scene for one of the major characters (He’s dying, NO WAIT, he’s gotta do one last thing, now he’s dying, NO WAIT…), but overall, what we get here is an action-packed film more notable for its acting than for its violence…
8/10