Stop the presses. Ed Zwick, director of such dreary though lavish efforts as Glory and The Last Samurai, has made a reasonably exciting film. No, really. At its best, there are shades of the shackled escapee movie about Blood Diamond.
You know the drill – two guys with little in common, Archer, a white Rhodesian mercenary (DiCaprio) and Vandy, a noble black everyman (Hounsou) are forced to work together toward a common goal. Vandy has the misfortune of being a Sierra Leonean fisherman during 1999. As the West tuts and frets over what Bill Clinton got up to behind the bike shed, the African republic is mired in a vicious civil war. When Revolutionary United Front troops descend upon his doomed village with butchery in mind, he is separated from his wife and children and shanghaied into working the diamond mines. There he happens on a large pink stone, thus attracting the attention of amoral jewel trader Archer and even moresinister fortune-hunters.
As a straight adventure film, is no Indiana Jones but it knows how to work a car-chase. Sadly, Mr. Zwick had loftier intentions. When Jennifer Connelly, playing a dolly-bird ace reporter, arrives to act as Leonardo’s love-interest and personal Jiminy Cricket, we are told in some hand-wringing style about the exploitation of Africa and the evils of the diamond trade. Fair enough. But a narrative that pivots on the conversion and heroism of Leo is classic White Man’s Burden stuff. Unlike The Constant Gardener or The Last King Of Scotland, Blood Diamond makes the white guy pretty fly once more.
Elsewhere black Africans are either noble or savage while the European evil-doers are rendered in the broadest possible terms, none more so than Martin Sheen’s outrageously Blairish diamond trader. This is not to suggest that the director had anything other than the best of intentions and, to be fair, the presence of Leo (who has never been better) might well attract the sort of silly twit who has never stopped to think before buying some undoubtedly unethical engagement rock. They should really take a read of a paper some time.