Blood Diamond (2006)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: 'Blood Diamond,' is both a gripping war thriller, and a political exposé of Sierra Leone's brutal Civil War and, crucially, the diamond trade that funded it.
  
  It follows local man Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) who becomes isolated from his family and forced to work on a diamond mine after his village is pillaged by insurgents. Just before the government attacks the rebel mine and imprisons him, he finds and buries a valuable pink diamond, and the rest of the film is spent on his journey back to the mine in the hope he can use riches from the diamond to locate and save his family.
  
  However, diamond smuggler Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) also tags along; promising Solomon help to locate and sell the diamond, but all the while planning to take it for himself on behalf of his masters. He enlists the help of journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) to get there, and she clocks what he's doing and serves as the moral compass to unlock his inevitable character arc where he decides to help Solomon after all.
  
  That story is gripping not only because of the conflicting character motivations, but because the conflict around them is brought to life so ferociously. Charles Leavitt's script creates a heck of a pace with its constant obstacles in the trio's path, whilst director Edward Zwick makes each feel genuinely chaotic and dangerous with his huge extra-filled sets and Paul Greengrass style camerawork.
  
  But that gritty realisation also performs another crucial function in bringing home the realities of the war with all of its bloodshed and horror - a fact confounded by the inclusion of child-soldiers. When coupled with context-building scenes of rebels talking about selling diamonds for weapons, Archer's bosses negotiating prices, and vaults in London hoarding diamonds to push the demand up, that makes a vital point about how the consumerism of the west drives exploitation overseas.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: From the cringey romance between Archer and Bowen, to the odd occasion when bloodshed feels like it's being played more for entertainment, its Hollywood-isms may leave you raising your eyebrows more than a couple of times.
  
  VERDICT: Edward Zwick's 'Blood Diamond,' viscerally realises the Sierra Leone Civil War to create a gripping and important film about Western consumerism driving violence overseas.

  Like?

  0 member like this review.