Blood Diamond: A Review

BLOOD DIAMOND

I have found that, on occasion, filmmakers will couch a message in their films. Blood Diamond uses a lot of action as a way of informing us to the evils of illegal diamond trading to finance wars. A bit heavy-handed and far longer than it should it, Blood Diamond has one particularly good performance and one serviceable one to make it worth seeing.

Sierra Leone, 1999. Humble fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) lives quietly with his wife, two daughters and son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers). Things are peaceful until the Revolutionary United Front, an armed group attempting to overthrow the government, storms into his village. They kill and maim the population, with Solomon being spared due only to him making for a good slave.

His task, along with other men, is to search for diamonds. These diamonds, known as conflict or blood diamonds, will be smuggled from Sierra Leone to Liberia, where they can be certified as conflict-free and thus legal for sale. Diamond companies, aware of the deception, will then buy them and either keep them in vaults to increase demand or create jewels for the international market. Solomon has found a very rare pink diamond and attempts to escape with it, hoping to use it to buy his family's way out of Africa. Caught by the evil Captain Poison (David Harewood), Solomon has the first of many fortunate escapes when government troops find the rebel camp and is arrested.

In jail, Poison's loud revelation of Solomon's find catches the attention of Rhodesian mercenary David Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio). Archer, a gun and diamond smuggler, gets Solomon out of jail and is desperate for him to tell him where Solomon buried the pink diamond. Solomon wants nothing to do with Archer or that cursed diamond. When Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown falls to the RUF, however, Solomon agrees to work with Archer in exchange for Archer helping locate Solomon's family and get them out.

Easier said than done, for Archer is under pressure from his former commander and frenemy Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo) to get the diamond too. Archer wants the diamond to finance his own way out of Africa and plans to betray both Solomon and Coetzee. He, however, had not counted on American journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly). Investigating the connection between blood diamonds and the powerful Van De Kaap family/diamond corporation, the beautiful Vital Affairs Magazine reporter has Archer slowly questioning his life choices. 

Solomon and Archer, having joined forces, now go to find the pink diamond. Solomon, horrified that Dia has been brainwashed into being a RUF child soldier, attempts to rescue his son. That ends in disaster, but luck is still with Solomon and Archer. Will Solomon and his family escape this nightmare? Will Maddy expose the evil Rudolph Van De Kaap (Marius Weyers) and his aide Mr. Simmons (Michael Sheen)? Who will live and who will die?

I am sure that I saw Blood Diamond when it was released. I, however, do not remember it being as long as it is. At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Blood Diamond is a surprisingly long film. This is a major flaw in Blood Diamond (no pun intended). Charles Leavitt's screenplay (with story by Leavitt and C. Gaby Mitchell) has a curious habit of going on either going on tangents or attempting almost to make two films. For the former, there is when Archer, Solomon and Maddy stumble onto the school of Benjamin Magai (Basil Wallace). Magai has rescued child soldiers and provided refuge and education for them. When looking for Dia, Magai goes with them and ends up getting shot but not killed by child RUF soldier Dead Body. Magai's cheerful, almost naive manner is bizarre given how he should know how traumatized and indoctrinated the child soldiers are.

He does survive, but once he's helicoptered to the hospital, we never see or hear from or about him again. Was he there just to remind us how amputations of African de facto slaves began under the Belgian King Leopold II? Leopold exploited Africa for his own gain, but how he is responsible for creating RUF child soldiers or the RUF leaders using alcohol, drugs and mental manipulation to both terrorize and indoctrinate children no one answers. 

As stated, Blood Diamond also seems to want to make a whole film about child soldiers. A surprising amount of time is taken up by Dia's turn into a RUF zombie. In a very curious choice by director Edward Zwick, the film cuts between a group of journalists coming across the aftereffects of a RUF/government battle and the training and manipulating of Dia and the other children. This decision to go from the journalists to the child soldiers and then back to the journalists undercuts both stories.

In fairness, Blood Diamond did precede Beasts of No Nation, which is also about African child soldiers, by almost a decade.

Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou received Oscar nominations for their performances in Lead and Supporting Actor respectively. This was DiCaprio's third nomination out of a current six (one win) and Hounsou's second and currently final nod. Hounsou's nomination was well deserved. 

His performance is exceptionally strong as the father caught in these terrible circumstances. Hounsou brings Solomon's continuous shock and determination to survive to life with great compassion. I questioned both his stubborn insistence on total honesty even when it harmed him and his apparent stupidity in trying to rescue Dia with only a vague plan. However, one can sympathize with Solomon, who is put in terrible circumstances and attempts to do the best that he can.

DiCaprio is a bit hit-and-miss. This was a banner year for DiCaprio who had a nomination for Blood Diamond while also starring in that year's Best Picture winner The Departed. Perhaps the Academy gave him a nomination for Blood Diamond over The Departed because his Afrikaner accent was slightly more believable than his Boston accent. Technically, Danny Archer was Rhodesian (what is now Zimbabwe) and not South African, but he did grow up in South Africa. DiCaprio is an actor who apparently went through an "accents showcase my versatility" period. While his Afrikaner tones were not awful, they did at times feel a bit forced and mannered. It comes across as an actor trying too hard. I think we are meant to focus on Archer's evolution from merciless mercenary to more compassionate person. He did a good job of that, good not great. However, his accent is again someone trying too hard. 

This is especially the case when DiCaprio shares scenes with Arnold Vosloo, who is South African. While he is best known as Imhotep in 1999's The Mummy, Vosloo was quietly effective and menacing as Colonel Coetzee. It is a shame that Vosloo was not given the Archer role. I understand why: Leonardo DiCaprio can open a film, Arnold Vosloo cannot. However, I think Vosloo would not have struggled with the accent the way that DiCaprio did. 

I wonder if the Connelly character was even necessary. Was she there to provide Archer with something of a love interest (the film does have them appear to be interested in each other)? Would it have made the film better if Bowen had been a man? Out of the three leads, this was probably the weakest.

The subject of blood diamonds seems to have been pretty much forgotten now. Whether it is due to the various conflicts no longer ongoing, the overall market being more effective in monitoring conflict diamonds or a lack of interest I cannot say. It is not a totally lost opportunity to mix a serious message with a lot of action. Blood Diamond did a serviceable job, but it is far too long to reach the levels it aspired to. 

DECISION: C+