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Blue Diamond |
Language: English
Directed : Edward Zwick
Writing credits (WGA) : Charles Leavitt (story and
screenplay)
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer , Djimon Hounsou as
Solomon Vandy , Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen
Review
"Blood Diamond" has a righteous message to get across to its
audience about how the African diamond trade has sparked civil war
and child enslavement. But this is the kind of film that within the
opening scenes chooses to bombard you with so much inexplicable
violence – pillaging of villagers, human limb mutilation,
executions, forced labor – that you are overwhelmed by feelings of
hopelessness for the situation.
If you are choked by the terribleness by all of this, then you might
have forgotten already what the film is saying about the origins of
violence, which is that diamonds are used for the arms trade and
slave trade. The film wants to let us know however that’s it okay to
still buy diamonds from our local jewelers as long as we are assured
that they are “conflict-free” diamonds. When we buy diamonds, from
say Sierra Leone, where this film takes place, somebody likely died
somewhere because of them.
Of course, in this blood-soaked entertainment disguised as a message
film, there are patented heroes. Leonardo DiCaprio is a
free-for-hire rogue Danny Archer, and he has a big accent (DiCaprio
likes to over-pronounce the last word at the end of every sentence).
Danny discovers that one exceptionally valuable pink diamond has
been hidden somewhere by fisherman Solomon (Djimon Hounsou). Solomon
has been separated from his family, and learns that he has to buy
them out of a refugee camp. The two of them become unlikely
comrades.
As the love interest, Jennifer Connelly is a journalist with a heart
that gets involved in Danny’s quest to reacquire the pink diamond,
hidden somewhere at a guard-patrolled mining farm. It’s a quest
riddled with scenes of Danny and Solomon outrunning bullets, and of
scenes of Connelly’s Maddey Bowen growing respect for Danny, whose
intentions are sometimes hard to interpret. Danny is a character who
only participates in danger as long as there is a pay-out at the end
of it. As Danny, the lean but now ripped DiCaprio is convincing
enough to play these types of roles, and he has the gravitas to make
us believe that he could survive in war zone situations. But one has
to wonder if DiCaprio spent as much time in a Hollywood tanning
salon as he did researching his part – his skin is lacquered golden
brown, but not blotchy or leathered skinned as you’d expect to see
on a traveling smuggler of the world.
Speaking of war zones, "Blood Diamond" as it goes along becomes less
about unfortunate civilian deaths than it does become about whether
DiCaprio can run through the middle of a battlefield, elude machine
gun bullets, and escape unscathed out the other end. The last thirty
minutes of this overlong two-hour plus film features so many action
theatrics that the film’s message becomes buried underneath the
noise. It’s easy to forget anything that was learned about
conflict-diamonds once the end credits roll. Our senses at that
point have become numb.
In Edward Zwick’s previous ballyhoo qausi-prestige film "The Last
Samurai," hero Tom Cruise became invincible against a firestorm of
machine gun bullets and had the courage to make a big speech before
the monarch and, uh, said something. "Blood Diamond" lacks the same
such subtlety, as it makes big squawking statements about the
injustices of Africa, such forgotten statements as they are. Yet
amidst all of the film’s , the film denies us the information on
what Interpol has done with any of these ruthless diamond
mercenaries. Are these mercenaries set free, in the name of
corruption, to continue the flow of the diamond trade economy? Other
such subject-related questions are also easily subsided.
One could be glad that they received a message about conflict
diamonds from this film, but one could easily prefer that the
message had been delivered in a different film. A different film
entirely. This is a bloated affair with a preoccupation to depress
you more than enlighten you. In superior films like "Hotel Rwanda"
and "The Constant Gardener," the violence was graphic and intense
and the message heartrending, but at least you didn’t feel like the
filmmakers were caught up solely in creating images of the hacking
and butchering of human lives as a storytelling cheap tactic.
Keywords: Blue Diamond, Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer , Djimon
Hounsou as Solomon Vandy , Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen ,
director Edward zwick
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