Engrossing, totally believable

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2007)

Found this story depressing to begin: Mud, lots of black people who are virtually slaves, jungle, warlords, general chaos... not the nice ordered typical Western urban environment which I prefer at all.
But the story involving Solomon Vandy - black "slave" diamond miner, Danny Archer (DiCaprio) - hustler, smuggler and Maddy Bowen (Connelly) - war correspondent/journalist soon became utterly engrossing. Great performances by this central trio.
*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***
Vandy finds a rare 100 carat clear pink stone and manages to steal and conceal it - the story largely revolves around the resulting adventures involving the several parties "interested" in retrieving the stone. But it's the context of the story I found so fascinating: child soldiers, black miners little more than slaves, sourcing the West's need for diamonds, the way prices of the latter are kept artificially high, the complete chaos that is large parts of Africa with warlords running rampant, killing & kidnapping, aid agencies with significant technical resources (like huge cargo planes) but evidently powerless to do little more than apply band-aids.
The film contains the usual "This is complete fiction" disclaimer, but one senses one has seen more than a little truth...