flawed but compelling social drama

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2007)

"Blood Diamond" may well result in the biggest boon yet for the cubic zirconium business. This latest work by Edward Zwick tackles a serious social issue in the guise of popular entertainment, which turns out to be both the greatest weakness and the greatest strength of the film.
"Blood" diamonds, also known as "conflict" diamonds, are those that are mined in war zones, then sold to finance those wars. Set in 1999, the movie features Leonardo DiCaprio as a largely amoral diamond smuggler who is plying his trade in war-torn Sierra Leone on the west coast of the African continent. Through a series of complicated events, Danny Archer meets up with a native named Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) who knows the whereabouts of a rare, priceless diamond that Archer, along with virtually everybody else in the film, would love to get his hands on. Solomon, however, needs its as a bargaining chip to ransom his wife and children who have been turned into refugees as a result of the internecine war occurring between the government and rebel forces out to enslave people like Solomon in the local mines. Jennifer Connelly plays a compassionate American reporter determined to expose the evil and corruption involved in the blood diamond business to a largely apathetic and hitherto unresponsive world at large.
With a screenplay by Charles Leavitt, based on a story by him and C. Gaby Mitchell, Zwick has fashioned a generally powerful film whose occasional dramatic contrivances can be easily forgiven in light of the salutary goal of the film. One could object to the fact that, yet again, a story set in the Third World seemingly needs to be told through the eyes of white people from the West. The movie tries to overcome this handicap by making it clear that Archer is actually from Zimbabwe - and DiCaprio has the South African accent to prove it - but the air of First World condescension is faintly evident nonetheless. Still, given the sad fact that such an approach was probably necessary even to get the film green-lighted let alone funded, one cannot really hold that against the filmmakers. The movie also indulges in a few too many action movie clichés - hairbreadth escapes, in-the-nick-of-time rescues, the near-miraculous dodging of bullets etc. - but, again, the movie makers clearly know they must first get the attention of their target audience before they can enlighten them about the situation at hand. Moreover, the film is a bit too long at 138 minutes and suffers from attenuation and repetition in its final half hour.
Those negatives aside, "Blood Diamond" is, for the most part, an effective piece of serious commercial movie-making, thanks, primarily, to Zwick's skill as a director and to the fine performances by DiCaprio, Connelly and, especially, Hounsou, whose quiet dignity and fierce determination do much to personalize the plight of the innocents caught in a hellhole of wanton slaughter and crass de-humanization. Perhaps the greatest strength of the movie is that it doesn't stint in showing us the brutality and widespread individual suffering brought about by this mad rush towards profit and greed. In addition, Archer's slow awakening to the depths of the human tragedy occurring around him and his own shameful participation in it may be predictable from a narrative standpoint, but it gives the film the moral weight and thematic depth it needs to elevate it above the level of a mere exploitative action picture.