I believe a movie can make itself valuable simply by telling an important sory. The new action thriller Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly tells the story of diamonds mined in Africa by rebels and terrorists and sold to fund dictatorships, genocide and terrorism. This is a story that has been ignored to long and just telling it lends a certain gravitas to Blood Diamond.
That said, the film is still, for the most part, a packaged Hollywood product. An action thriller with plenty of bullets, blood and bombs going off. The action is high octane but because the story is so true and so sobering it's difficult to accept the giddy thrill that such slick Hollywood action often elicits. This leaves one with a mostly mixed impression of the well intended Blood Diamond.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Blood Diamond as Danny Archer; a diamond smuggler who acts as the go between for terrorists and warlords and the diamond syndicates in London and America who purchase the so called "Conflict Diamonds", diamonds often covered with the blood of innocent africans. As the movie notes, more than 15 percent of diamonds sold in world are conflict diamonds and the billions of dollars made off of the sale of these diamonds is funding terrorism and genocide throughout Africa.
Danny Archer does not take much time to reflect on his ethics. The opportunistic Danny is constantly searching for a score and when he happens on a farmer named Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) who escaped forced labor at a rebel diamond mine after he stashed a rare pink diamond, Danny seizes the opportunity. Offering to help reunite Solomon with his family, made refugees by a rebel attack, Solomon reluctantly agrees to lead Danny to the diamond.
Joining the search is an idealistic journalist named Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) who is after Danny in search of proof of the link between conflict diamonds and the world's leading diamond dealer. Using her connections, Maddy gets Danny and Solomon back to the jungles where Solomon hid the diamond, in exchange Danny gives her the story she is looking for.
Ed Zwick, the director behind The Last Samurai and Courage Under Fire, directs Blood Diamond with a great care for the reality of this disturbing story. That means he had to be true to the horrific violence that surrounds the African diamond trade. Blood Diamond is brutally violent in depicting how rebel forces recruit their slave labor workforce. Women and children are murdered indiscriminately while able bodied men are either tortured or forced to work in the mines. Limbs are lopped off at will and children are recruited to become warriors with machine guns.
These images are disturbing and shocking and yet; as presented by Ed Zwick they have a certain Hollywood slickness to them. There is a puncturing of the reality of these scenes because Zwick and cinematographer Eduardo Serra choose to shoot the film on traditional film stock. If ever a subject called for the gritty realistic look of handheld digital it's Blood Diamond. Shot as a traditional Hollywood picture the highly stylized and clean photography of Blood Diamond undercuts the brutal story being told.
The disconnect is jarring. At once you are watching a classic Hollywood action film with guns and explosions that usually illicit giddy thrills but here are tempered by a very serious sobering subject. Blood Diamond is an experience that is difficult to enjoy and indeed may not have meant to be enjoyable as a typical popcorn program picture. Yet the film looks; and the action feels like a typical Hollywood action epic.
Aside from the important subject, the reason to see Blood Diamond is the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio. Evincing a tough guy menace that is unexpected of him, even after his similar tough guy role in The Departed, Dicaprio delivers a powerful performance that is far more complex and unique than most action movie heroes.
Really; DiCaprio's Danny Archer is no hero, he is as much a villain as he is a brave man. When he decides to go for the diamond he is opportunistic and cold blooded and when called upon to be heroic, DiCaprio plays the conflicted nature of Danny Archer extraordinarily well.
Director Ed Zwick preached his way through The Last Samurai and Courage Under Fire and The Siege, hammering home ham fisted points about the complicated measures of patriotism with in your face earnestness. He can't resist doing a little more preaching in Blood Diamond, even when preaching about a seemingly unrelated topic like the war in Iraq.
In a minor and slightly humorous scene, Djimon Hounsou has a brief conversation with a lost villager who laments the violence of the diamond trade but hopes they never discover oil in Africa or else they will be in real trouble. A darkly funny exchange but an entirely unnecessary scene.
I am recommending Blood Diamond based on the important story it tells and the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio. His is a performance that is worth of the the buzz that has Leo vs Leo at the Oscars in March; with his performance in Blood Diamond versus his performance in The Departed. I don't see that happening but both performances are more than worthy of Academy consideration.
Blood Diamond is a flawed Hollywood action picture that garners unwarranted importance from its subject matter. That is a subject that desperately needs public attention does manage to redeem what is otherwise just another Hollywood action movie.
