Tightly Directed Action Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (22 March 2007)

Edward Zwick delivers the goods with BLOOD DIAMOND, a tense and very compelling film about the greed and bloodshed that surround the diamond industry of Sierra Leone. Though a bit too long at two and a half hours the story is not only a dramatically viable one for a film, but it also has much to say about human interaction and the sanctity of friendship.
Solomon Bo (Djimon Hounsou) is a fisherman who becomes indentured to the evil men who search for diamonds after being separated form his family and in the course of working for the vile men who are in the illegal diamond industry he discovers a huge pink diamond and hides it form the overseers. He is caught, jailed, and while imprisoned he is observed by a Rhodesian white man Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) who discovers Solomon's secret and arranges for him to be released from prison with money to salvage his life. However, we discover that Danny is in the black market end of the diamond trade and Danny promises Solomon he will get his family back for him if Solomon shares the hidden pink diamond. A journalist Maddy (Jennifer Connelly) finds Danny and recognizes a good resource for a revealing article about the diamond trade. Danny and Maddy form an alliance: the rest of the film consists of the chases to recover the diamond with Danny and Solomon bonding and attempting to avoid every manner of interloper.
The performances by DiCaprio, Hounsou, and Connelly are superb but there are also fine performances in the smaller roles filled with such actors as Michael Sheen, Kagiso Kuypers, Benu Mabhena, Jimi Mistry, and Stephen Collins. The cinematography by Eduardo Serra manages to capture the beauty of the country as well as the horror of the battles. But in the end it is Zwick (The Last Samurai, Courage Under Fire, Legends of the Fall, Leaving Normal, Glory, etc) who transforms the screenplay by Charles Leavitt and C. Gaby Mitchell into an intelligent and engrossing film. Recommended. Grady Harp