Blood Diamond (2006)

Directed by Edward Zwick. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly, Kagiso Kuypers, Arnold Vosloo, Benu Mabhena, Anthony Coleman, David Harewood, Jimi Mistry, Basil Wallace, Marius Weyers, Michael Sheen. [R]

An action movie with a social conscience, but these two attitudes never sit quite right as bedfellows here. DiCaprio and Hounsou are both appropriately intense in the key roles of a cynical smuggler/opportunist and a sincerely desperate father, respectively; the latter has stashed away a valuable conflict diamond he discovered as part of a forced mining detail in the Sierra Leone, and when DiCaprio hears of this, he offers to help Hounsou find his family in exchange for the diamond, and an uneasy partnership is formed. Technically accomplished and passionately performed, but repeated gun battles, chases, and Hollywood-ized good fortunes and skin-by-their- teeth escapes tend to trivialize the subject matter, which is given its time in the spotlight through facile political tract, but the act of putting faces onto a tragic news narrative creates symbols and unconventional action heroes more than humanized victims. A third major player (an American journalist played by Connelly) is there simply to provide political context, a voice of conscience, and a little forced romance with DiCaprio’s amoral mercenary; her purpose in the staged epilogue is purely for show since only an irresponsibly earnest filmmaker would dare to suggest real consequences or reform is on the table. Sam Elliott makes a brief uncredited appearance.

64/100