Another epic of self-important bombast from director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall, Glory), Blood Diamond is a longer, less-thrilling variation on Hotel Rwanda, dutifully parading a stock of noble savages and white-man's-burden stereotypes across the screen before combusting in a blaze of self-congratulatory conceit. And, as with Mr. Holland's Opus and its unholy ilk, when any movie stoops to literally applauding itself in the end, you know you're in trouble.
Set in Sierra Leone during the civil wars of the late '90s, Blood Diamond features Leonard DiCaprio as a white smuggler who hooks up with the movie's primary noble savage (Djimon Hounsou) in order to snag a priceless pink diamond. DiCaprio and Hounsou do a lot of aimless running around avoiding bullets, and then the movie periodically stops dead in its tracks in order to allow love interest Jennifer Connelly to preach about Western complicity in Africa's ongoing rush to destroy itself. The already lengthy running time is further padded with a not entirely necessary subplot about Hounsou's young son being abducted by bloodthirsty rebels and indoctrinated as a child soldier.
The political speeches rotate with scenes of frenetic action as we watch the conflicted Caucasian hero's inevitable course toward moral redemption. It's beautifully shot, for the most part, with some good performances from DiCaprio and Hounsou (considering he's cursed to play the same character over and over), but it all comes across as very mechanical, very heavy-handed, and possibly condescending. Think The Constant Gardener without the mind games that made it interesting.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
