Movie Review: Blood Diamond (2006)

I realize this movie came out in 2006, but I only saw it just recently. I must say I was very pleasantly surprised by Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance.

The story is about the life of diamond mine workers, smugglers, and civil war in Sierra Leone. I don’t know that I completely bought DiCaprio’s accents, but this is probably the most mature role I’ve ever seen him in. I was totally disappointed in his performance in The Man in the Iron Mask and I don’t even want to talk about Titanic. Those two movies are probably the only reason I don’t watch Leonardo DiCaprio. Can’t stand that wingey kinda whiney voice when his character gets upset.

Djimon Honsou. Do I really need to say more? Ok, I suppose I should expand a little more on what it is that I like about him. Aside from the fact that I think he is probably one of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen. Amistad and Gladiator are responsible for that I think. I’m not really sure what it is about him that makes him so sexy. His accent, his intent stare, strong jaw? I really don’t know.

The two main characters, Danny Archer (DiCaprio) and Solomon Vandy (Honsou) are not completely balanced, but the story works well enough.    

The story itself is about a village fisherman, Solomon Vandy, and how his village is overrun by rebels who take the men to work in diamond mines and the children are recruited into the rebel army. Solomon is taken to work in a river to pan for diamonds and his son, Dia (Kagiso Kuypers) is taken to train as a rebel. Dia is exposed to images of inhumane murder, torture, and outrageous violence. The rest of the family is thrown into a refugee camp.

While panning for diamonds in a river, Solomon finds a large pink diamond and finds a way to smuggle it from the river he was panning. The overseer finds him trying to stash the diamond and is about to punish him, but is instead knocked down and out by a blast by the government army. The overseer winds up in a government jail where he tells about the diamond that Solomon found and hid. Danny Archer (DiCaprio) knows that he can command a huge sum for the diamond and gets Solomon to agree to swap the diamond for getting his family and son back together.

Danny Archer convinces an American journalist, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) to help them to find Vandy’s family and son in return for a huge story about the diamond trade in Africa.

When Vandy, Archer and Bowen find Solomon’s family in the refugee camp, Solomon becomes quite distressed to learn that his son was taken away to train in the rebel camp. By the time they find Dia, he has fallen into the rebel groove and does not accept his father or his rescue. He has come to believe that the rebel army is his family and will provide for him and keep him safe.

Throughout all of this, Archer is beginning to have a crisis of conscience because on the face of it he could care less about the Vandy family. His only concern is getting that diamond and the huge payoff it will provide for him. I think it’s toward the middle of the movie that I finally recognized the talent that DiCaprio has. He pulled off giving his character a soul and therefore made his character more believable.

We all regard diamonds as a highly prized jewel. Aside from its industrial uses because of its being the hardest material known to man, a diamond is a symbol of love, of status, a measurement of wealth, and it is ever-lasting. It takes millions of years for a single diamond to form, and yet so much is destroyed in mining them. Powerful businessmen and corrupt governments do everything in their power to mine diamonds of all sizes and peddle them to the highest bidders and as a society we save and save so that we can afford to buy one.

Don’t get me wrong - I love diamonds just as much as everyone else (my preference is sapphires). But never for a second doubt the turmoil in diamond-producing countries isn’t real. Men, women and children lose their lives for these precious gems. Civil wars are financed by these precious gems.

I’m sorry - I went off on a tangent there and I didn’t mean to. But in the event that the storyline of the movie didn’t quite get the message across about the civil war in Sierra Leone and the diamond traffic that goes on in Africa.

DiCaprio and Honsou did a great job at portraying equally opposite characters where one who was out for himself learned to go out for someone else and one who was all about his family embraced an outsider as he learned how to survive outside of his village.

I’m almost looking forward to seeing DiCaprio’s upcoming movie with Russell Crowe, Body of Lies, which is scheduled to come out October 10th.