Great Hounsou and DiCaprio in thrilling journey through Sierra Leone

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2017)

Blood Diamond Is directed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai) and takes place in Sierra Leone. The movie follows two protagonists Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) and Danny Archer (Leonard DiCaprio), the former a fisherman, separated from his family by the civil war, and the latter a sly diamond smuggler. Solomon is being forced by the rebels to look for diamonds and stumbles on a pretty big one. When Archer finds out about the diamond, they form an unlikely partnership to help each other out: a diamond for Archer and a family for Solomon.
Let's get the obvious out of the way first: the performances by DiCaprio and Hounsou are brilliant. Hounsou gives an overall restrained performance but knows exactly when and how to explode. DiCaprio is at least Oscar worthy, nails the foreign accent of his character and outshines in the subtle portrayal of his emotions. The best parts of the movie take place when those two characters are together, the chemistry works and provides us with thrilling and funny scenes.
The movie is one big, epic adventure through the country of Sierra Leone. The civil war that's raging in the country ensures a constant menacing atmosphere. The violence is brutal: wives and children are being butchered, hands and arms are being chopped, the rebels know no mercy. When a little boy tries to hide a diamond while working for the rebels and the leader (Captain Poison, played by David Harewood) notices, this menacing atmosphere surely raises the tension.
The movie also tries to convey a message about the materialism in the first world. Everybody wants diamonds, but doesn't really care where they come from. When journalists write about it, people care for a minute, but nothing changes. When Solomon naively asks journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) if people would come help when she publishes her story, she cynically laughs and says 'no'. The movie could have benefited from delving deeper into this materialism and ignorance towards the state of affairs in the countries supplying their gadgets that they so badly want but not need.
Blood Diamond takes you on a at times fun, and at times shocking, devastating ride through a devastated Sierra Leone. The conclusion of the movie is satisfying and the great soundtrack surely helps with that. Being 2 hours and 23 minutes long, there were surely some sequences that didn't really add much to the story and could have been left out. Also, I wonder if this movie would have been as interesting without the charismatic Hounsou and DiCaprio.