Could have been a lot better if it was more focused

Rating: 7/10 (24 March 2007)

Leading up to its theatrical release, Blood Diamond had a lot of controversy over its depiction of the conflict diamond industry. It arrived, and was met with apprehension by critics, and did not exactly light the box office on fire. It went on to a few awards, and eventually, five Academy Award nominations. So was there actually a good movie here, or was it just overly average?
Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) lives a tranquil life with his wife and three children in a village outside of Sierra Leone. One day, a group calling themselves the RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, comes blazing into the village, devastating it, and capturing Vandy. He is put to work mining diamonds, and happens to come across an extremely rare diamond everyone wants their hands on  a blood diamond. He buries it, and ends up getting arrested with much of the RUF and other prisoners. It is in prison, while having an argument with one of the leaders, that diamond smuggler Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes a shine to him.
This description only skims the top of the immensely subplot laden film. While the essential plot is for Vandy and Archer to go and get the diamond, there is also bits with a female journalist named Maddy (Jennifer Connelly) trying to cover the conflict diamond story, the search for Vandy's son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers) who has been captured by the RUF, and the whole big scheme of the international diamond sellers who are both battling complaints about accepting conflict diamonds, while they are waiting for Archer to deliver on giving them this blood diamond.
It gets to be a little too much in some cases, racing around in circles and introducing characters at a moment's notice. A lot of them barely get any screen time, but they are introduced anyway and are thrown into the mix of the storyline. But even saying that, the film is downright boring in some cases. I had to turn it off because it just stopped going anywhere after awhile. It sets itself up pretty nice, but then falls into a lull that lasts for almost the entire second act. It takes long enough to get there, and even longer to reach the third. It just feels awkward, and begs of needing much stronger editing. At a sluggish 143-minute runtime, it could have done with it and could have ended up being so much more focused than it is. It is interesting, but could have been a lot shorter.
Another issue is how preachy the movie gets. We understand that there is deep trouble concerning the mining for these diamonds. We do not need characters to bash us over the heads with their prolific and exhausting dialogue. In some cases, it comes naturally off the character's tongues and feels like it needs to be there in the conversations. It feels right, and only adds to the film's goal of authenticity. But in the majority, the dialogue feels like it was tacked on just to get a rise out of the audience. A call to action, sort to speak. What is worse is these moments are glaringly obvious, and make the film out to be more amateurish than it actually is. This is a big budget Hollywood production, not a film student's sociology film. Adding unnatural dialogue just for the sake of it, only stinks of trouble.
The actual action and film-making techniques employed in the film are not all that bad though. The cinematography is excellent (if slightly feeling a bit too much like a take on the visually superior Children of Men), and the art direction is wonderful. The pieces of Africa that they capture are just so majestic, that even the most brutal of violence still looks great on camera. A huge gunfight sequence on the streets of Sierra Leone is well orchestrated, and is filmed gorgeously. Another helicopter raid sequence is almost right on the same par. The action is raw and gritty. It feels authentic, and also feels horrific in its brutality. The very blood reddish colours used throughout the film are a testament to this, both during scenes of massive violence and in scenes of tranquil beauty. Even the grounds walked on are red.
Acting wise, everyone is a bit mixed. Hounsou is clearly the best of the bunch here, but only really begins showing the needed genuine emotion near the end of the film. He has a bit during the middle, but throughout the rest, he just has nothing. He is vastly talented, and he plays his role with an absolute desire for perfection, but he is just not totally right in every case. DiCaprio fares much worse. His accent, while being truthful to South Africa (or so I am told), is one of the most annoying things I have ever had to listen to. It works sparingly, and when his voice is not breaking into his actual American accent, just does not feel right for this film. His acting is good as always, but not up to the same calibre as Hounsou, or even himself in The Departed. He really needs to work on his inner "scumbag" role. He is supposed to be selfish here, but he really just looks undecided in how he should act.
The rest of the supporting cast is okay in their small roles (especially Kuypers). Connelly is good in her role as the journalist, and is very strong for a character I never expected to be anything more than slight eye candy. She has done much better work in the past though.
Better focus on the story, and more genuine emotion would have helped this film a lot. It is too long as it is, and gets really preachy in some cases. It is an interesting, albeit flawed, film to watch, but it does the job. It just could have been a whole lot better.
7/10.