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In 1999, Africa’s Sierra Leone is under siege by rebels. Not content with just terrorizing the government, they scourge their own citizens searching for the strongest to work in the diamond camps, the youngest to convert to their cause and maiming the rest. One such victim is Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) who is unable to protect his son, Dia (Caruso Kuypers) from the vicious Captain Poison (David Harewood). His boy is captured and Solomon witnesses first hand the consequences of trying to hide booty from the pirates. Nevertheless, when he comes upon a unique beauty of a diamond with a pink shading inside he buries the precious stone and escapes the Captain’s grasp when both are incarcerated.

Catching wind of Solomon’s find is Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a smuggler who has spent his whole life in Africa and works as a go-between for both the corrupt Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo) and the wealthy UK diamond manufacturers (Michael Sheen & Marius Weyers) who pay handsomely even while fronting a concern for “conflict stones” on a U.N. committee. Archer is your atypical “soldier of fortune”, leaving politics to the others and being rewarded for his denial in cash. American journalist, Maddie Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) flirts her way into Danny’s conscience, looking for an inside man who can help expose the atrocities of the illegal diamond trade in an article she’s been trying to write. Danny eventually relents and makes partners of both Solomon and Maddy; promising to help find his son (before he goes the route of The Searchers) in exchange for the pink diamond (the great score that he can retire on) and blowing all the whistles to Maddy as, I suppose, a parting gift.

Zwick and screenwriter Charles “K-PAX” Leavitt have a lot of plot to cover in setting up what is essentially a high-falutin’ treasure hunt. Archer and Solomon’s relationship is one of obvious conflicts of multiple interest, but its increasingly ambiguous nature works in contrast to developing either a believable bonding or adversarial nature. Archer works with such an on/off switch that it’s difficult to decipher when he’s speaking from the heart or when he’s saying precisely what his counterpart of the moment wants to hear. But it’s clear from the start that Zwick and Leavitt aren’t out to make Archer into an anti-hero, but just another in a long string of audience eyes who would understand monetary gain first only to be educated in the human element that signs those checks in blood.

When the film finally settles down into a quest picture about 90 minutes in, it doesn’t engage us in the tradition of grand adventure stories. They hide from some rebels, Archer lays down the law about silence, they climb, find a rebel camp and call in an air strike from the very people they just fled from as if it were their plan all along. Finally, when it comes down to the stone retrieval, its such an anti-climactic moment that Solomon may as well have just put it in a safe deposit box. Zwick does excel at large-scale battlefields as anyone who has seen Glory, Courage Under Fire or The Last Samurai can tell you, and there are more than a few escapes and strafings to hold our attention even if our emotion for the characters have been left well behind with the other heavy lifting.

Ultimately it’s a leap of faith considering the clientel of the diamond market. Are women suddenly going to find a new best friend? Will rap stars and athletes hear the pitter-patter of “bling BANG” the next time they need a sparkly clock to hang around their package? Nevermore. Who on their engagement ring hunt after seeing Blood Diamond is going to go through the research runaround to see if the yearly salary they are laying down is being used on a stone from a war-torn area? You have a greater shot of your fiancé being Superman and squeezing a rock out of a lump of coal.

Blood Diamond takes on the kind of corrupt moral uncertainties of a world we’d rather turn the page or channel on, but hits audiences too hard with it. Zwick would have been better off using the serious stuff as window dressing for a Sierra Madre like conflict instead of the kind that delivers its own standing ovation in the end when the crusaders win out. Either that or jettison it as an action vehicle altogether and crafting an insider’s view via the means of a Fast Food Nation or Traffic. As a mish-mash of the two we’re left with about half of each and speeches filling in the blanks in an attempt to convince us how important everything is. I don’t know how much Joe Everyman can do to squelch genocidal smuggling since the dent that can be created depends on those who can actually afford said diamonds in the first place. Does this put the onus on the “bling bling” crowd? At least Zwick has given men everywhere an excuse for their ladies the next time they expect a bigger piece of jewelry than their friends. Honey, did you know that everytime I buy a ring, ten Africans lose their hands? Bling Bang THAT, bee-yotch!

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=15293&reviewer=198
originally posted: 12/08/06 16:21:35
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