A nail-biting action movie with a message thrown in

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2007)

Edward Zwick's film is that rarest of rare beasts, a genuinely exciting action movie with a social conscience that is neither exploitative nor unduly sentimental. At times it is quite the equal of "Under Fire" and "The Constant Gardener", one set in Nicaragua, the other, like this, in Africa but all dealing with conflict in the Third World.
There is no doubting Zwick's message and the contempt he feels for regimes that allow children as young as ten to train as soldiers and to kill without conscience as much as for the diamond companies in the West that trade in blood diamonds. But Zwick is canny enough to adhere to that old axiom that if you want to send a message use Western Union. Audiences need action and a bona-fide star and here they get both.
At times the violence is excruciating but the action sequences are nail-bitingly good, (and sometimes stomach-churningly real), pitching the audience right in there with documentary-like precision. He never shys away from the horror of what is happening while keeping things at a very high octane level.
As for that bona-fide star, Leonardo DiCaprio just seems to get better with every movie. His diamond smuggling Danny Archer is no conventional hero, (once upon a time he might even have been the villain), and the script doesn't really give him a lot to work with, but it's a tremendous piece of acting all the same. Arguably it is the most lived-in DiCaprio performance yet.
As for the plot, it's hardly innovative. (DiCaprio joins forces with an African mine worker to retrieve a massive uncut diamond which the mine worker has secreted away in the jungle and which he hopes to use to rescue his family who have been taken by rebels while DiCaprio wants the diamond for himself). However, the plot is only the lynch-pin for this powerful indicement of Third World conflict and Western greed. That the African mine worker is played by the great Djimon Hounsou adds considerably to the proceedings. He lends the film a grace-note it might otherwise not have had.