lacking in depth but effective

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2011)

Blood Diamond, the Titanic in Africa. Here's the deal, Leonardo takes a dangerous journey, meets an American girl with an attitude, and there is a bloody great diamond involved. Plus a lot of innocent people die. The plot follows the Blood Diamonds from Sierra Leone, West Africa. Mined by slaves to fund a civil war, the diamonds flood the legitimate market after being laundered. In the movie, a slave, Solomon, finds and buries a huge mother of a pink diamond, then the camp is attacked. Solomon is freed but white diamond smuggler Danny hears about the diamond in prison, and the two get out of a heavily assaulted Freetown and form a reluctant bond, Solomon needing Danny's help to find his family and Danny wanting the pink stone. Riding shotgun is middle-class American chick with race guilt and nice hooters, Maddy, who also happens to be a photojournalist. As it turns out Solomon's wife and two daughters are in a camp, but his son has been impressed into service by the RUF (Rebel United Front). So Danny and Solomon head back to the camp to try and find the diamond and Solomon's son, who has now been exposed to mass murder and heavy drugs, a foul practice. Along the way we see the horrors of war in Africa, the retired South African white regiment that is now a mercenary army, the destruction the Africans visit upon themselves. A cheesy movie, Zwick has no depth, (like in Glory or Last Samurai he introduces racially charged topics and dramatic situations) yet it is effective because the material is so rich in human tragedy. Leonardo Di Caprio is cast very inappropriately. In Titanic, he was supposed to be a very worldly-traveled precocious young man. Here it is even worse; he is supposed to be this prematurely aged veteran of armed conflict. It just doesn't work, however it's always nice to see Jennifer Connelly, even with her clothes on. That black guy from Gladiator with the name like a fancy French sandwich with mustard is very good as well, but I would be wary starring next to him because the white guys he stars with all die and are therefore illegible for a sequel.