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"Blood Diamond" Review
December 11, 2006
So, last week, I finally saw “Blood Diamond.”After hearing and thinking about this movie for so many months, it was a little strange to judge it not as “An Incredibly Important Issue The Industry Has to Handle,” but as... a movie.
And so my short review is – and the studio can quote me on this: “’Blood Diamond’ Lasts Forever!”
Man, that was boring. Keep in mind, I’m a tough critic, not in the film’s target audience (action-adventure and/or Leonardo DiCaprio fans) and am very close to the subject matter. Furthermore, none of my problems with the film dilute the importance of its message, which I will get to in a second. And I should add that most people I’ve talked to liked it.
But to me, only parts of the film worked. It opens with some incredibly powerful scenes of Sierra Leone’s civil war that viscerally show what life what have been like back then. Many people were turned off by the film's violence, but I admire the filmmakers' determination to show things how they were (and the reality was far worse.) The snapshots of DiCaprio's life as a smuggler were all fascinating. The first 20 minutes or so had me captivated.
But then it devolves into a buddy movie and far-fetched romance. By the time the film reaches its climax on a mountaintop, it has long since plunged into the valley.
The film calls to mind director Ed Zwick’s last film, “The Last Samurai,” which also took a real, very serious historical event and built a cliched movie around it. Yes, Dicaprio is great, the scenery is beautiful, and the child solider scenes are every bit as horrifying as they should be. But it drags on so slowly that I can’t imagine anyone recommending it, or wanting to see such a disturbing movie in the middle of the holidays. And, in fact, it did not do well on its opening weekend.
As for its impact on the industry, the film’s final montage – where protesters finally catch up to the evil “Van der Kamp” cartel – and the Kimberley Process-noting end card deliver a surprisingly upbeat message that takes some of the sting away. The film also places Sierra Leone’s civil war, as the trade likes to say, in its “proper historical context.”
However, let’s not fool ourselves: This film and surrounding publicity will hurt diamond sales. No one will come out of that movie lusting for a tennis bracelet. From start to finish, it portrays the industry as amoral and sleazy, and people don’t like to buy from sleazy industries. De Beers also has a major PR problem it may take years to fix. The most hopeful thing I can say is, if a movie audience can buy smuggler Danny Archer’s rehabilitation in the film, perhaps they will eventually accept the diamond industry’s.
In the end, everyone in the trade should see the movie – because its best moments demonstrate, far better than all the talk on this issue ever could, just why there is a Kimberley Process, and how important it is for all people in the chain is to fulfill its obligations.
Misc. notes and quibbles:
-In contrast to what the movie says, if memory serves, Partnership Africa Canada wrote the first report on conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone, but since Global Witness is allied with the filmmakers, they got the shout-out.
- I've been to many conflict diamond conferences in my life, and I never saw the 15 percent number bandied about like it was in the film. If the number did hit 15 percent, it was in the mid-1990s. By 1999, it was clearly around four percent.
-Maybe this is my Jewish paranoia kicking in, but why did Zwick, who is one of us, need to put a yarmulke on the guy in Antwerp?
-The film really demonstrates how much the trade has changed in six years. De Beers no longer stockpiles, and now controls 40 to 50 percent of the market, instead of the 70 - 80 percent it did back then. I am also pretty happy the industry no longer touts the “two month salary guideline” (referenced as “three” in the film), which in retrospect was transparently phony.
-With all the facts the film throws at us, I did not catch one mention of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes, who bares so much of the blame for what happened to Sierra Leone.
- Your reviews are welcome.
Posted by Rob Bates on December 11, 2006 | Comments (4)
