Blood Diamond, staring
Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer, the anti-hero of the story,
Djimon Hounsou as Solomon Vandy, a simple peasant fisher man (he was also in Gladiator), and
Jennifer Connelly, as the nosy report, Maddy Bowen. Blood Diamond is very harsh and violent. DiCaprio's character is an ex-mercenary, diamond smuggler, and gun runner. DiCaprio is almost James Bond like in this movie. The movie Blood Diamond, pulls no punches, has a brutal honesty about it. This film is dark, sick and twisted. It gets uglier and uglier as it goes on. TIA This is Africa.
Blood Diamond is very much a war movie like Saving Private Ryan, Hotel Rwanda, Lord of War or Black Hawk Down. Lord of War is very much related to this issue of Blood Diamonds or as they are also known
Conflict Diamonds. Its also the opposite of Lord of War, as Blood Diamond is a tale told from the victims point of view and its has same documentary feel of Hotel Rwanda. Blood Diamond is like those other movies in its war like senseless violence, but it also has more of a documentary feel to it. TIA This is Africa.
Blood Diamond is set in war torn Sierra Leone in 1999. Everyone, from the diamond industry, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) (the rebel faction in the movie), the Army, Archer to the reporter character are villains in Blood Diamond. Everyone is trying to get something and Greed is a big part of the plot of this dark tale. The reporter wants her story, the African only wants his family and everyone wants the giant diamond. Blood Diamond has a bitter sweet ending, but I won't give away any spoilers about the ending. There is some humor in the movie. Such as "I hope they don't find oil here" and "she reminds me of my wife" both in some native tribal tongue with subtitles. There is also some Afrikaans spoken in the movie which is subtitled, also they use the Afrikaans racial slur, "caffer" (like the South African version of the "N-word") which was last used in Lethal Weapon 2 way back when.
The moral of the story is this: is a wedding ring worth someone's hand (or in some cases hands)? Very serious food for thought. TIA This is Africa.
Rated R for strong violence and language.
Running time: two hours twenty three minutes.
