TIA: This Is Africa

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2018)

A story about the violence over resources in the worst affected continent of the world, the film is great in capturing the nerve of everything that is wrong in Africa by means of characters who are there for different reasons.
The story revolves around the main characters who represent the different agents at work in Sierra Leone, a country on the brink of a coup by extremists. The movie begins with Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) who is captured by the extremists as a worker to mine for diamonds. The warlords buy guns by selling these diamonds to Dicaprio (Danny Archer) who is a smuggler in cahoots with the diamond industry and the army. Djimon comes across a huge diamond which Dicaprio gets interested. Meanwhile Maddy Bowen(Jennifer Connelly) is a journalist following the story of blood diamonds and gets involved in the whole mess.
This is a great movie from director Edward Zwick, who is successful in portraying the alternate views on Africa through the characters. Here's my 5 points:
1. The central thing to Blood Diamond is the characters. Both Djimon and Dicaprio were nominated to the Academy awards and rightly so. Dicaprio does a South African accent an you love everytime he says "bru". He jus plays a smooth badass smuggler who knows how to deal with the government, the army and the bandits. Djimon on the other hand plays a very strong character who is looking to reunite with his family. The actors have their heart in the characters they are playing and they seem very realistic.
2. Dialogues are seldom great in movies not based on books, but not blood diamond. A movie dealing with such a serious topic, with characters who so strongly believe in their version of Africa, has to be driven by great dialogues. All the violence around them has shaped not just heir beliefs but also their view of the world which is reflected in the words they speak, like when Dicaprio says "God has long ago forsaken this land." Watch this once more just for the dialogues.
3. Zwick does a great directorial job. Had this movie not involved so much of violence, right from the start to the end, this could have very well been a great adventure movie. The characters are constantly on the run through a maze of army and terrorists to reach the diamond, seems like a plot for a video game. And during all this there is the recurrent theme of Djimon trying to be a family man he is supposed to be. Zwick does keep the flame of positivity alive by using this angle.
4. Music wise, the movie is awesome. They did not try to get a very African type of music which often is the case with movies based in Africa. That would have suited a movie based on African culture. Here the role of the music and background score was the aid the narrative, not be the narrative itself. Blood diamond got 2 Academy Award and one Grammy nomination for the sound and you know why when you watch this. It changes its tone as the movie changes its tone very beautifully, as the movie shifts gears from violence to action to emotions in a matter of seconds.
Over all, the movie is great if you're in mood for some power packed performances and action. Watch it on with a set of big headphones on!