Taut, original African drama

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2015)

When I first saw BLOOD DIAMOND advertised, the trailer put it across as a straightforward action film, nothing more, nothing less. It's nothing of the kind. Although the film does have a handful of well-played action sequences, it is in actual fact a drama through and through, dealing with the horrors of warfare and the plight of an oppressed country in the same way as a film like THE KILLING FIELDS. Despite it's length â€“ it does drag in a few places â€“ this is a very well made film, ably handled by director Edward Zwick, who previously treated us to THE LAST SAMURAI.
The camera-work is breathtaking, the script is intelligent and the cast is populated by some very good actors, not least DiCaprio, who with this and THE DEPARTED seems to have set himself a new benchmark in acting performances, and Djimon Hounsou, whose heart and soul performance carries the movie along through its dark places. It's also nice to see genre actors like Basil Wallace and Arnold Vosloo getting a chance to act in more serious fare. The plot is relatively complex, as many rival factions battle it out over the bloody diamond fields of Sierra Leone in the '90s, but it never loses you for a second and there's plenty to say about the situation, particularly in the original sub-plot involving desensitised child soldiers. Not a perfect film perhaps but still a very good one, chilling and moving when it needs to be.