Is this a world worth living in?

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2014)

It is the late 1990s and a group of rebels is attacking villages in the West African nation of Sierra Leone in order to capture people to make them harvest diamonds. The political unrest within this part of Africa has stirred up a lot of attention in the diamond industry overseas, thereby creating an extended diamond market for these African rebel groups. One man has dedicated his life to the smuggling of precious materials and gained information that a worker in one of the rebel camps had found an enormous pink diamond; something that could be worth a fortune. This man is Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio). Archer sees this as an opportunity to become rich and quickly seizes it, manipulating anyone he can in order to have his way culminating in an exciting journey in which Archer discovers who his true self is.
Blood Diamond, created by The Bedford Falls Virtual Studios Initial Entertainment group, directed by Edward Zwick in December, 2006, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou, received a rating of 8/10 and tells the story about the ravaging of villages throughout West Africa in order to find able-bodied men to harvest diamonds, as well as the story of what it is like to live in a place with a government full of corruption and disorganization.
The movie follows the life of Solomon Vandy, a man who is taken away from his family after his village gets ransacked by rebels in order to work as someone who looks for diamonds, and Danny Archer, a smuggler. In the beginning of the movie, Vandy's camp gets attacked and he is able to escape. From this point on the movie shifts between the two perspectives of Vandy and Archer until they finally meet and agree to go find a very large diamond that Vandy said that he found while working at the camp. Another character important to the story is Maddy Bowen, a journalist from America who wants to write a story on the diamond trade going on between Africa and the rest of the world.
In my opinion, the most interesting part of the movie was the character development of Archer. In the beginning of the movie, he seems to only care about his work and earning money. Later on in the movie this changes dramatically. DiCaprio's depiction of a man who has witnessed only hatred and greed in his life adds to the sense of reality in the basis of the movie. Another thing that I really liked about the movie was that the story is based off of real events. These are real problems going on right now in Africa so there is a true message being sent out to the viewers of this movie.
If you are someone who is adamant about helping others or even what life is like in the rest of the world then I would recommend this movie to you. The glimpse that we see into a completely different way of living and how it is corrupted by the weakness of the government speaks not only to people who take interest in international affairs and world relations, but to all people who believe that the world is a place that should be enjoyed living in.