Genre - Political Action Adventure

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2006)

This is a resubmitted review of a Test Screening edit, not the final movie. The original review was removed by IMDb for unknown reasons and has been edited. For the particularly sensitive, this review may contain SPOILERS!
'Blood Diamond' is the relatively simple story of an amoral diamond smuggler, Archer, helping a Liberian fisherman, Soloman, to find the giant pink diamond that he hid out in the bush while working in the diamond mines. Solomon agrees to act as Archer's guide in exchange for assistance in locating his family in some far flung refugee camp, and his son, kidnapped and brainwashed by Liberia's rebel forces.
If all this sounds rather dour and depressing, and far too political and preachy a movie to actually be entertaining, you couldn't be more wrong. In essence, 'Blood Diamond' is an old fashioned adventure movie that harks back to the days on 'King Solomon's Mines' or 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. It's all wrapped up in contemporary events in West Africa and introduces the largely unavoidable politics only if and when they lend depth and motivation to a character, but it's still just an adventure story. An r-rated, messy and violent adventure story that shines a spotlight on a hidden region of the world, but an adventure story none-the-less.
Zwick, who I've never rated particularly highly as a director, injects the whole thing with genuine excitement and adrenaline. There are several action setpieces that are truly spectacular, and he manages to keep the focus tightly on the action and adventure while resisting the temptation to turn the whole thing in to a PBS documentary on the horrors of West African child soldiers.
Special note has to go the three leads. Di Caprio, following the excellent 'The Departed' delivers what could possibly be an even better performance. Not only does he manage to pull off the South African accent without a hitch, but he even manages to speak in pidgin English at one point without generating embarrassed snickers from the audience  no mean feat. He carries the role with a confidence that is unlikely to go unnoticed at award time. Hounsou brings the same impassioned intensity to his role that he's been summoning since 'Amistad', providing an emotional core to a movie populated by tired cynics. Connelly, who looks better than ever here, is, however, wasted. She delivers a great performance that subtly conveys the vulture nature of even the most well-meaning reporter, but her character is, quite bizarrely, required to leave the movie just when things get interesting. She and Di Caprio have such obvious chemistry that it's a mystery why the producers felt the need to split them up so soon after meeting.
Dan Weil's production design is outstanding and clearly award-worthy. He pretty much does what he did for 'Syriana'; that is, create an environment that seems so authentic that you can all but smell the garbage in the streets.
There are a couple of low points. The music, by James Newton Howard, is obvious, clichéd, overtly manipulative, and drew attention to itself at all the wrong moments. I was interested to see in his bio that he was responsible for the 'King Kong' soundtrack, which was one of the most irritating and repetitive in recent years.
The last 10 minutes, in which a bizarre and completely incongruous happy ending is tacked on to the movie, is terrible. It falls back on every feel-good cliché of the genre (note the ending of last year's 'The Constant Gardener') while betraying everything the movie has attempted to establish over the previous two hours. The story has a very clear and obvious ending, and it takes place on an African mountainside, not at a London press-conference. I'm hoping that Warner has the courage to de-Disneyfy the ending before release, as it greatly reduces the impact and credibility of the film.
'Blood Diamond' is an excellent movie, one of the best I've seen all year - a solid story, compellingly told, with actors delivering great performances. Should Warner decide to deepen the relationship between DiCaprio and Connelly and ditch the lousy ending, it would earn a full 10 out of 10. Whatsmore, it also prompted me to go out to the library and check out several books about the socio-political history of West Africa. I'm sure I won't be the only one, and that is where the true success of the movie lies.