Blood Diamond

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Mixing pure old-style, adrenaline-pumping movie excitement with a penetrating social message, Blood Diamond tries to have it both ways and generally succeeds as a highly entertaining and winning action/adventure film. Leonardo DiCaprio—sporting a convincing South African accent—is flawless as a morally conflicted soldier of fortune seeking to use a priceless diamond as his ticket out of his crumbling mercenary life. To do that, he teams with a fisherman (a moving Djimon Hounsou) who found and buried the gem while working as slave labor for the corrupt forces exploiting Africa's natural resources for their own means. The search for this "conflict" diamond becomes central, not only for DiCaprio's plans, but also in freeing Hounsou's family from a refugee camp and winning back his son who's enlisted in a terrifying army of child soldiers trained to kill first and think later. In the middle of it all is a journalist (Jennifer Connelly who has never been better) who becomes a part of the story she is reporting emotionally and physically. Although set in the 1990's and using contemporary problems plaguing the entire African continent, Blood Diamond could have easily been made decades ago, when stars like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart played unethical characters whose hidden conscience eventually comes to surface. The well-financed diamond industry has already been attacking the filmmakers for suggesting their carats could have been acquired using criminal methods, but the sparklers in question are reportedly just a tiny percentage of the finished product. Still, here's a movie that's likely to make you think next time you're in the market for an engagement ring.

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