"Dey've god a leedle problem 'ere, huh?"

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2008)

There's no 'may' about it...
Edward Zwick's social conscience message-movie, while written with intelligence (for a mainstream Hollywood pic), lacks the necessary insight to be an unqualified success. Like many writers faced with a big important subject, Charles Leavitt struggles to find believable (or interesting) characters through which he can tell the tale. Instead, he comes up with a cast that are familiar to us all  the amoral adventurer, ripe for redemption; the crusading journalist (who also just happens to be a gutsy, strong-willed woman), a noble native everyman, a villainous diamond smuggler  all of whom are way too simplistic in their representative roles.
As always, Leonardo Di Caprio delivers an admirable performance, even if he does lay on the 'Saird Efriken' accent a bit thick, although, for my money, he was too convincing in his amoral stage to make his eventual redemption believable. And how heroic is that self-sacrificing redemption? It's always good to see Hollywood straying from its tendency for happy endings, but Danny Archer's decision to die on a hillside rather than try to save himself ('Oi've god a leedle problem 'ere, huh?') really doesn't ring true.
At its surface level the film makes for passable action-adventure entertainment, despite (or maybe because of) the stock characterisation, and is a bit of a throwback to the Hollywood adventures of the 50s. But burden all those explosions and killings with a cumbersome message that comes across as a little too preachy at times and the whole thing gets a little weighed down by its own importance.