Typical Over-The-Top Hollywood Fare Demands Too Much Suspension of Disbelief

Rating: 5/10 (28 March 2007)

OK, first the positives. The acting is great. Dicaprio is very, very good as are the other main characters. The cinematography is rich and wondrous. There is action. The characters are interesting. And, as everyone knows before entering the theater or renting the movie, there is going to be plenty of violence. And yes, the violence is handled with skill. It is movie violence. They do not show the head getting crushed with a shovel, you only see it coming and hear the sound.
Even the title is great. So many levels of meaning. Diamonds and bloodshed, wedded. Oh yes, and that rock you get your sweetheart when you get wedded, might have been bought with blood. And what is a "blood diamond"? It is large, it is hard, it is precious. It is hidden and valuable. It is a metaphor for many things and one thing. Rosebud. A rose is a rose is a rose.
So what's wrong with this movie? Why isn't it working for me? Why do I keep wanting to fast forward? The answers to these questions reveal the movie's fundamental weakness. Is it because I just don't care about the characters? That's part of it. The greater problem is that the quantity of close escapes, improbable escapes, improbable re-unions, impossible situations that you really have to stop caring whether this story could really happen or not.
Dicaprio is superhero and anti-hero. Spiderman with an attitude. No matter how many times he encounters armies of rebels with AK-47s, missiles and the like, he and his sidekick always dodge the bullets and glide away.
And so, you fast forward. You really don't care HOW they get away, and you already know that they will, so what is the big whoop? Fast forward.
Then there is the improbable with regard to African jungles. Are there really no bugs, no snakes, no crocs in the river, no predatory beasts? And where do they sleep? I get tired traveling on a business trip for four days, eating well, sleeping in comfortable beds. These people run through the jungle, sleep on the ground, get up and climb mountains, fight battles. And they never need caffeine. They are superheroes. Bigger than life.
The plot is predictable. You know he will find his family. You know he will find his son again. You already know Africa is a bad, bad place, and that it is the fault of the Colonializers.
Alas, the director created some beautiful cinematography, but like Peter Jackson's King Kong, there were too many scenes that went way too long. My speculation is that these directors spend so much time and money creating a set, setting up the shoot, that they don't have the good sense to put a lot of what is shot onto the cutting room floor. They fall in love with what they created, whether it is relevant or not. I think here of Chinatown by way of contrast. A scene does not have to include everything that happens. The bedroom scene with Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson has parts of the beginning of an encounter, parts of the aftermath, and leaves the rest to the imagine. The goal of the scene is to move the story forward. Instead, in movies like King Kong and Blood Diamond, the aim of the scene is The Scene. To make it and milk it.
Great films are about story, and Hollywood all too often forgets this. Blood Diamond could have been a better film. Most of the elements are actually there. The actors certainly gave it their best and performed admirably. In the end, though, the film felt too much like a Hollywood cliché.