DVD Reviews

Blood Diamond: Special Edition

Easy to dismiss as the latest story about black Africans told with white protagonists, Blood Diamond rises above that cliché by squarely implicating its western characters in the snake-eating-its-tail that is the African diamond trade. The European company in the film buys diamonds from warlords in Sierra Leone who spend the money on weapons, increasing their stranglehold on a terrorized populace and turning thousands of adolescent boys into killers. Leonardo Di Caprio's antihero is a blatant exploiter of this system, a morally indifferent white African bloodying his own soil. But director Edward Zwick gives in to a different temptation: he tries to create an epic of complexity, setting too many conflicting elements against each other.

Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) is a fisherman whose family has been scattered by armed rebels during Sierra Leone's civil war. Forced to pan for diamonds at gunpoint, he uncovers a gem of enormous size and buries it. Word spreads to smuggler/mercenary Danny Archer (Di Caprio), who strikes a deal with Vandy. He will help Vandy find his family if Vandy shows him where the diamond is. Vandy and Archer battle their way from the besieged capital to the refugee camps and beyond in an old-fashioned adventure story fleshed out with moral ambiguity and separate agendas.

That isn't enough for Zwick and writer Charles Leavitt. We're also treated to Jennifer Connelly as a reporter who helps Archer and Vandy (and exposits on the role of journalism), Archer's military unit (the army gone corrupt), the machinations of the diamond company (greed!), and the incredible ordeal of Vandy's son, indoctrinated into the rebellion with drugs, brainwashing and torture. These plots are fascinating, but when you try to say everything, you say nothing, know what I mean?

Despite Di Caprio's dozen close shaves, Zwick spares no crowd of Africans in the mayhem. It's hard to cheer the heroes' gun battles after cringing at the brutality of the militia. The crispness of the DVD image works against the film in this regard, suggesting a Hollywood gloss at odds with the gritty subject matter. There is a whiff of what Truffaut called cinema de papa in the directorial style—slick and digestible despite the killings. The facile dialogue, where every line is a pronouncement, doesn't help.

The film ends on a note of hope, as the UN prepares to implement the Kimberly Accord, a system meant to weed out conflict diamonds. The hour-long documentary included on disc two all but erases that hope. Sierra Leone journalist Sorious Samoura travels to the state-sanctioned mines, which break the backs and deaden the spirit of its workers; to the illegal mines in Congo, which add the risk of being shot; to the porous black markets of Guinea; and finally to the diamond district of New York City, where buyers aren't interested where a stone is from. The system punishes legitimate trade and makes suspect every certificate of authenticity.

"Inside the Siege of Freetown" gets right into the exhausting details of shooting an action scene, with several techs getting their moment to shine. "Journalism on the Front Line" features zero journalists; it's just Connelly et al discussing how these brave scribes make them feel. Zwick's commentary plays like his film: supremely calculated, packed with detail, desperate to infuse meaning into every scene.

Blood Diamond the film is overstuffed, and too many scenes are resolved by coincidence. Yet there is no denying the power of its strongest parts. The DVD set is a fine primer on any number of crippling African problems stemming from conflict diamonds, or any African goods we want badly enough. As one character puts it, "God help us if they ever find oil here."

Review By Michael Rottman