Blood Diamond

Continuing on from the last two weeks, I'm starting this week off with another review of an Oscar-related film, this time the politically-conscious thriller 'Blood Diamond'. The film is nominated for 5 awards, including Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou), and it comes only 8 years after the tragic and disgraceful real life events that it is based on. Which not only makes it controversial, but also shows balls in it's willingness to tackle such subjects head on while these kinds of things are still going on.

A 'blood diamond' (also known as 'conflict diamonds') is a diamond that comes from a war zone, in this case the west-african nation of Sierra Leone. These diamonds are illegal owing to the nature of trade that makes them available... the selling of a blood diamonds often goes directly towards financing civil war, oppression and barbaric atrocities in third world nations. Enter Danny Archer (DiCaprio), a white Rhodesian ex-soldier who smuggles blood diamonds for a corrupt South African Colonel. These diamonds are sold on to a big British diamond buying group who own various jewellery stores and lock the diamonds up to ensure their prices can be kept high. So, as you can see, it's all a very sordid and dirty affair... and it all takes place off the back of the Sierra Leone Civil War - a war propogated by thugs who have torn the country apart using child soldiers in the most violent of ways.

Director Edward Zwick ('Glory', 'The Last Samurai') paints an epic and impressive picture of a scary and fucked up continent, a land left debilitated by centuries of European and Western interference. This movie shows just one of the latest waves of greed to corrupt an African nation... an infection that attacks all those who come into contact with it, black and white alike. The RUF (Revolutionary United Front), a ragtag army of discontented citizens, scour Sierra Leone for diamonds in the hopes of further financing their terrifying campaign of dismemberment, murder and brainwashing in the name of overthrowing the current government. Their use and training of child soldiers (kidnapped from their families in various villages) is an especially abominable aspect of what went on (and probably still goes on elsewhere), and this part of the film makes a pretty big impact.

The central cast are especially deserving of some kudos for this movie... Djimon Hounsou continues to demonstrate an impressive range as the poor fisherman desperate to reunite his family and Jennifer Connelly gives a more naturalistic performance than usual as the action-addicted journalist, managing to shrug off her trademark coldness and evoking sympathy for once. The real star of course though is Leonardo DiCaprio, who is fast becoming one of the most surprising actors of his generation... the impressive roles he has been picking lately have become impossible to predict, and he's been nailing them left, right and centre. He is fast becoming an expert on playing ambiguous and conflicted characters, and his white-African accent in 'Blood Diamond' sounded absolutely realistic.

This is a really good movie, it probably fell just shy of being nominated for Best Film owing either to it's controversial nature (a real life diamond-trade group, the De Beers Group, were very wary of the film), it's brutal portrayal of the civil war (real-life child amputees were used), or the fact that the Academy seems to place more importance on esoteric crap like 'Babel'. Either way, this isn't a film that should be ignored, it manages to both inform and entertain and keeps things at an impressively snapping pace for all of it's 140 minutes.

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