Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond (Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly) – Leo could get two Oscar nominations this year with his performance here as a Rhodesian diamond smuggler who forges an unlikely bond with an African fisherman separated from his family during the civic chaos in Sierra Leone.  A history lesson veiled as a action film highlights the incredible atrocities people can perpetrate on another in “the continent God left,” according to DiCaprio’s character, Danny Archer.  The certain Oscar nomination will go to Hounsou, who is proving enormously talented (Amistad, In America) with his sheer screen presence and passion.  The movie is not for the feint at heart.  There is a lot of violence here, always senseless and usually graphic.  This could have been an enormously authentic and original movie except that the screenwriters, producer and director figured this needed a love story and pretty face. That comes in the form of Jennifer Connelly as a magazine journalist hell-bent on getting the real story, exposing the diamond industry for encouraging and maybe even finding these conflict diamonds.  The story doesn’t need most of this, but it promises to broaden the audience for this docu-drama.  While the movie is reminiscent of some of the recent films set in Africa, its story is more compelling, the action scenes more vivid, and the cinematography is stunning.