It puts your nose in the muck all the way

Rating: 8/10 (28 October 2007)

I just looked at Blood Diamond. This is really depressing. What is going on in this world? How could I go to a jeweler's store to buy a wedding ring for my loved one, when I think of this movie? Okay, I can hear you say, it is just a movie. Right, it's not a documentary; what happened here didn't really happen. But we see it in the news everyday. Things like this happen. It may be diamonds, it may be oil, it may be gold or it may even be wood. We know it happens, and we unwillingly take part in it. And we get numb. I looked at news footage like this so much, it sometimes changed my perspective. The other day, the news showed a clip of so called freedom fighters, ripping of the clothes of a young woman, throwing her down, in the street, naked. She fell on her knees, and there the clip halted. And my first thought was, she looks nice, immediately followed by the thought, she must have hurt herself. And after that, only then I thought, she may not be alive in a couple of seconds. What kind of world is this, to make thoughts put in this order? This movie shows it all. Of course it's a movie, so it has to be entertaining too, but it puts your nose in the muck all the way. Leonardo DiCaprio is a good actor, it shows. He had a hard time to find his way up again, but he did. Djimon Hounsou, Kagiso Kuypers and Benu Mabhena play very credibly a family that gets ripped apart in this war. Jennifer Connelly, as the journalist, is less convincing but don't worry, it doesn't break the movie. All in all this is a very good movie, and, I think, worth an Oscar.