Another film with potential shafted by lazy writing

Rating: 3/10 (3 December 2006)

The first indication that something went very wrong at the screenplay stage in Edward Zwick's new film Blood Diamond occurs around the twenty minute mark, when Leonard DiCaprio's character is asked, "How long have I known, you, Danny?" Attention, anyone with even a vague interest in film: this is poor screen writing. There is no quicker, more dependable indication of a lazy, sub-par writer than this little ditty, which appears in an astonishing number of very bad scripts. It is a writer saying, in essence, "I cannot be bothered to think of a way to impart this information in natural, conversational dialog, so I will simply have one character ask another character something that no human being would ever say to another, because I have total contempt for my audience." Because, really, why would any person ever ask another person how long they'd known each other? Don't they both know? The screenplay is again the downfall of a film with potential in Blood Diamond. It is not quite as bad a script as the one that Emilio Estevez slapped together for Bobby, but it's a photo finish. Estevez' scenario was full of one-dimensional characters and bland, clunky exposition, but there was a little bit of color and voice to at least some of it; Blood Diamond plays like a filmed outline. The film is built around the germ of an intriguing idea, and everything follows a fairly logical progression, but none of it happens in a particularly interesting or memorable way.
DiCaprio stars as Danny Archer, a smuggler and hustler who overhears a holding cell confrontation between a rebel soldier and Solomon (the reliably soulful and effective Djimon Hounsou), a diamond field worker who has hidden a huge, uncut stone in the jungle. Solomon was taken from his family by the rebels and only wants to find them; Archer wants the stone, and figures they can help each other out.
There's also the predictably hot American reporter (Jennifer Connelly), who pops up every once in a while to engage in political arguments with Archer and provide him with an uninteresting pseudo-romantic subplot. There's a lot of talk in Blood Diamond-- about Africa and the diamond trade and working for change and American complicity and so forth, and there are two problems with all of this talk. The first is that these lengthy political discourses are usually followed by a car chase or a shoot-out, and the two mix uneasily. The second is that when people have these conversations, they turn into mouthpieces; nothing is less entertaining (or interesting) than A Film With An Agenda, and when a writer is not clever enough to engage in subtext and instead has every character constantly represent exactly What They Believe, then we're veering into Crash territory.
The structure is less than perfect; the film takes entirely too long to get going (and at 143 minutes, it overstays its welcome considerably), and it arrives at what looks, feels, and should be an ending before going on for at least ten more minutes with an entirely unnecessary epilogue (though said epilogue does give us the required moment where the journalist, seeing a private, personal moment, puts down her camera to keep from exploiting her subjects. Shattering stuffback in the 80s, when we first saw it).
However, Blood Diamond is not altogether unsuccessful. There are some moments of real power (though they are fleeting), and however incongruent the action sequences might be, they are well-staged and shot by director Zwick. Connelly does reasonably well with her poorly developed role (no talented actor should be saddled with her stump speech on what it is to be a journalist), and DiCaprio is refreshingly effective as a scumbag (though his accent is a tad dodgy, and his third act change-of-heart is entirely out of nowhere, even by Hollywood standards).
So, yeah, even what works requires qualifiers. And the film's successes are shattered by the laugh-out-loud moment in the end title cards where the audience is informed that these "conflict diamonds" still make their way, in spite of legislation to the contrary, into America, so (and I'm quoting here) "it is up to the consumer to insist that diamonds are conflict free." By that point, I was expecting MacGruff the crime dog to pop in and encourage us to take a bite out of exploitation.
Blood Diamond is reasonably well-made, and as well-acted as can be expected. It is not bad in any particular way, or in any particularly aggressive way. It is just sort of bland and uninspired, and there are too many fine films in theaters now to kill two and a half hours with this one.