Overall Rating
  Awesome: 29.07%
Worth A Look: 29.07%
Average: 34.88%
Pretty Bad: 1.16%
Total Crap: 5.81%
7 reviews, 44 user ratings
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| Blood Diamond |
by Doug Bentin
"DiCaprio’s breakout role"
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Two or three years ago, “Blood Diamond,” if it got made at all, would have starred Tom Cruise and the lead character, Danny Archer, diamond smuggler and all ‘round cynical bastard from Zimbabwe, would have been a charming rogue who ends up saving the day and settling down with the girl. As it is, Archer is played with convincing weltschmertz by a buffed-up, scruffy Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio’s Archer wants money so he can escape Africa because he thinks Africa is what’s wrong with him.Cruise and DiCaprio--it’s the difference between an aging Errol Flynn and a toughening Humphrey Bogart playing the part. No contest.
A fisherman from Sierra Leone named Solomon Vandy (the brilliant Djimon Hounsou from “Amistad” and “Gladiator”) is kidnapped by rebel soldiers and forced to work as a digger of diamonds while his son is trained to be a child soldier and his wife and daughters are forced into a refugee camp. Solomon finds a huge pink diamond which he buries, his hope being that he can retrieve it, escape, sell it, and be reunited with his family.
He manages the escape when the diamond camp is overrun by government soldiers. The bad news is, he is thrown into jail. There his boss from the camp accuses him of stealing the diamond, and this exchange is overheard by Archer, who has been canned for smuggling.
Archer’s criminal associates spring him, and he bails out Solomon, offering then to help him find his family if he will hand the diamond over to Archer.
Along the way our heroes pick up an American journalist who wants to blow the lid off the diamond smuggling business (Jennifer Connelly, with her usual mediocre performance). The film is structured like a standard pursuit and chase story, but there’s more to it than that. It also works as a powerful family-in-crisis tale, and director Edward Zwick’s social conscience has never been more in evidence.
Diamond smuggling doesn’t seem like such a serious crime until you realize that “conflict diamonds” go a long way toward paying for the arms that keep Africa in turmoil, which more than suits white interests that want to move back in to despoil the land of its natural resources. “I hope they don’t find oil here,” one village elder says. “Then we’d really have trouble.”
Charles Leavitt has written an intelligent script. He knows just how far to push the horrors-of-the-situation button before easing off with another action sequence. Young Kagiso Kuypers is wonderful as Dia, Solomon’s conflicted son, wanting to be a doctor but given a thorough brainwashing and an automatic rifle, and Arnold Vosloo (“The Mummy”) is chilling as Col. Coetzee, the Conradian pragmatist who made Archer the way he is. Watch, too, for a cameo by Michael Sheen, Tony Blair in “The Queen.”
Cinematographer Eduardo Sierra reveals the stunning beauty of Africa—more than once I caught myself thinking that humans should just leave the place the hell alone—and editor Steven Rosenblum does terrific work tying it all together.
And finally, back to DiCaprio, who truly comes of age here. He’s 32 now and he should have moved into these “adult” roles years ago, but he’s been cursed with a baby face that is just now beginning to show its mileage. Even in “The Departed” he sometimes looked like a young guy trying to play older. Not anymore. He’s ready. DiCaprio is such a pleasant surprise you’ll wonder if this is the same actor who went down with the ship, or maybe that callow youth’s father.The depth of “Blood Diamond” took me by surprise. It’ll do the same for you. It’s one of 2006’s best films.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=15293&reviewer=405
originally posted: 12/19/06 06:08:09
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USA
08-Dec-2006 (R)
DVD: 20-Mar-2007
UK
N/A
Australia
04-Jan-2007
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