Fairly good movie, about what is expected....

Rating: 7/10 (10 May 2007)

Reminds me strongly of 'Constant Gardner' and prob. 'Tears of the Sun' if you can believe it. DeCaprio's a rather Russell Crowe-ish character, for the most part you buy him and his Afrikaaner accent, despite a couple slip-ups here and there. He's a smuggler/mercenary sort who is just out for himself and winds up dragging the Diane Sawyer-ish Connelly character along for the ride while aiming for the 'Blood Diamond'. The only way to find it, of course, is to have Hermansou there lead him BACK to the mines, back to where his son is being forced into a hellish child-soldier existence, while all hell breaks loose.
Basically this is a road movie-they cover an enormous amount of territory-rain forest, plains, high plateaus, sea-ports; you get the S African army(?) involved, lead by our friend the Mummy(!) Arnold Vosloo-this time w/ a head of hair. No wonder I didn't really recognize the guy-though here he plays a baddie once again. He's under-used, if anything.
The parts of this that work the best-again-the depictions of that terrible multi sided civil war from 10 years ago in Sierra Leone, the refugee camps, the attack on Freetown, etc. That's really good, Hotel Rwanda time. What doesn't work-well the attack on Freetown becomes a lot like either Tears of the Sun or Rambo, these guys are swamped by a Black Hawk Down scenario and make it out unscathed. They always seem to find the one friend or crony or good samaritan when they need one in the middle of nowheres. And face it-in this, Leo is meant to be a Rambo-lite.
I kinda wondered about his extended death-scene-being drug up the hill w/ a lung-wound, only then to turn round and hold off the pursuing baddies w/ a couple machine guns while Hermansou and son take-off. Sure. It's Hollywood-what ya expect? The movie itself is moving, well made, though the characters are flat and 2 dimensional save for Hermansou thru most of it. Connelly is fine but under-used. They do get the job done, the characters are all flawed beings, the intent was to clearly to educate AND entertain, for the most part I think Edward Zwick and co deliver.
*** outta ****