facts about conflict diamonds quickly and accurately. DiCaprio's performance is impressive, certainly the best by him I've ever seen: he is totally believable as a white African. Jennifer Connelly's role is much smaller but she makes the most of it. Djiman Housou has enormous physical presence as the brave Mende fisherman. This movie just gets so many things right that the few places it departs from reality are entirely forgivable. I would heartily recommend this movie to everyone; it is the best Hollywood movie I've seen in years.

shovel.And, Jennifer Connelly's understated elegance & expressiveness is captivating. Put this movie at the top of your list.

rating. My local reviewer gave it a B+.My exposure to the civil war and only some of the events of this movie were based on reading books, hundreds of witness statements, online material about the war, including the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Report, and listening to over 100 witnesses testify, and my trial was not even those of the RUF and AFRC, the really bad actors of the war, as the movie shows, pulling no punches. The accounts of atrocities are shockingly real. Tens of thousands had hands amputated, people were indiscriminately murdered, women raped or forced to marry, villages were burned, and children were kidnapped and forced to fight the war for both of the rebel factions RUF and AFRC . Making a child a soldier is a war crime, and this movie artfully shows you why, without saying a word about it.Sherman said, about our own Civil War, that "War is hell." But, African civil war is far different and atrocious because it inevitably leads to atrocities. This fine work, with Hotel Rwanda, stands out as a film seriously attempting to explain the atrocities that Africans somehow can do to themselves.

astonished if he isn't considered at Oscar time. Secondly, although I've had little patience for him before, Leonardo DiCaprio has really impressed me this year. With his performances in 'The Departed' and now 'Blood Diamond,' I think I need to reappraise my own biases against him. I'm becoming a fan.Some of the early reviews that I read painted 'Blood Diamond' as hysterical left-winger cause-head paradise. They suggest that the conflict diamond situation has been exaggerated and completely distorted. I don't know if that is the case. The film makes a compelling case but I don't base my political and economic decisions on films that I watch. My interest here was to see how characters would respond to adversity and a terrible, horrifyingly dark situation. The political agenda of the film isn't as cloyingly bombastic as I was afraid it might be. This is a film that, while concerned with the political situation in Africa, focuses more on how the obsessive search for a large, rare pink diamond consumes those who get too close to it.DiCaprio is excellent as a Rhodesian HIS description mercenary and arms dealer working in Sierra Leone. Hounsou is a fisherman who gets drawn into the civil war raging around him and discovers a pink diamond that could save -- or destroy -- both he and his family. Jennifer Connelly plays a journalist trying to discover if a huge multi-national diamond company is knowingly in the market for conflict diamonds. Jennifer Connelly seems to get the worst of the dialogue. When told that Americans are in part to blame for conflict diamonds she responds with a line about 'not all girls want a fantasy wedding.' It makes her look naive at best and silly at worst. She generally manages to save the character from either of those fates though and also manages to avoid self-righteousness when dealing with some of the films more morally flexible characters. Hounsou is great and the desperation in his character as he tries to find his family crackles on the screen. He is cagey and understands what he needs to do to survive. His character is not above playing servile if that will keep him alive. And when provoked to violence, the result was absolutely chilling. In much smaller roles are Arnold Vosloo as a mercenary Colonel, Stephen Collins as a diplomat and Michael Sheen as an executive at a diamond company. Excellent performances all around.Is 'Blood Diamond' judgemental? I think that is the wrong question. The film is a character study both of all the men pursuing the pink diamond and what effect it has on them, but it is also a character study of Africa. Tragic and heartsick, 'Blood Diamond' is drenched with cynicism and defeatism. Why is there misery and exploitation? "TIA," explains DiCaprio to Connelly, "This Is Africa." In contrast to a film like 'Traffic,' 'Blood Diamond' doesn't wallow in hopelessness. Some of the characters might be cynical but the film itself does search for hope. The heart of the picture is the human cost. Characters see the wealth of the diamond and are destroyed by it. The film shares a great deal thematically with a film like 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre.' High praise for a high quality film.

and brainwashed by Liberia's rebel forces.If all this sounds rather dour and depressing, and far too political and preachy a movie to actually be entertaining, you couldn't be more wrong. In essence, 'Blood Diamond' is an old fashioned adventure movie that harks back to the days on 'King Solomon's Mines' or 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. It's all wrapped up in contemporary events in West Africa and introduces the largely unavoidable politics only if and when they lend depth and motivation to a character, but it's still just an adventure story. An r-rated, messy and violent adventure story that shines a spotlight on a hidden region of the world, but an adventure story none-the-less.Zwick, who I've never rated particularly highly as a director, injects the whole thing with genuine excitement and adrenaline. There are several action setpieces that are truly spectacular, and he manages to keep the focus tightly on the action and adventure while resisting the temptation to turn the whole thing in to a PBS documentary on the horrors of West African child soldiers.Special note has to go the three leads. Di Caprio, following the excellent 'The Departed' delivers what could possibly be an even better performance. Not only does he manage to pull off the South African accent without a hitch, but he even manages to speak in pidgin English at one point without generating embarrassed snickers from the audience – no mean feat. He carries the role with a confidence that is unlikely to go unnoticed at award time. Hounsou brings the same impassioned intensity to his role that he's been summoning since 'Amistad', providing an emotional core to a movie populated by tired cynics. Connelly, who looks better than ever here, is, however, wasted. She delivers a great performance that subtly conveys the vulture nature of even the most well-meaning reporter, but her character is, quite bizarrely, required to leave the movie just when things get interesting. She and Di Caprio have such obvious chemistry that it's a mystery why the producers felt the need to split them up so soon after meeting.Dan Weil's production design is outstanding and clearly award-worthy. He pretty much does what he did for 'Syriana'; that is, create an environment that seems so authentic that you can all but smell the garbage in the streets.There are a couple of low points. The music, by James Newton Howard, is obvious, clichéd, overtly manipulative, and drew attention to itself at all the wrong moments. I was interested to see in his bio that he was responsible for the 'King Kong' soundtrack, which was one of the most irritating and repetitive in recent years.The last 10 minutes, in which a bizarre and completely incongruous happy ending is tacked on to the movie, is terrible. It falls back on every feel-good cliché of the genre note the ending of last year's 'The Constant Gardener' while betraying everything the movie has attempted to establish over the previous two hours. The story has a very clear and obvious ending, and it takes place on an African mountainside, not at a London press-conference. I'm hoping that Warner has the courage to de-Disneyfy the ending before release, as it greatly reduces the impact and credibility of the film.'Blood Diamond' is an excellent movie, one of the best I've seen all year - a solid story, compellingly told, with actors delivering great performances. Should Warner decide to deepen the relationship between DiCaprio and Connelly and ditch the lousy ending, it would earn a full 10 out of 10. Whatsmore, it also prompted me to go out to the library and check out several books about the socio-political history of West Africa. I'm sure I won't be the only one, and that is where the true success of the movie lies.

would happen in real life--yet it is far from being idealistic. Hopefully, everyone who sees it will take it with them long after they leave the theater and will remember it the next time they find themselves eying a diamond in the jewelry store.As for the actors, Djimon Hounsou shows again what a powerful actor he is, and Leonardo DiCaprio has never been better. He has had a great year between this and The Departed, and is becoming better at his craft every time he appears in a film. I love Jennifer Connelly, but she makes little impact here.Edward Zwick continues to make powerful films. Glory and The Last Samurai are two of my all-time favorites, and now I add Blood Diamond to that list. It is the most important movie of the year.

into more mature roles.In Blood Diamond, it is Mr. DiCaprio's performance that raises this film above it's standard Hollywood fare of a script although it is a solid script into something memorable. His performance here as an opportunistic diamond smuggler equals that of the one he gave earlier in the fall as "Billy Costigan" in The Departed, although the two characters couldn't be more different from each other. It may be his best performance yet, and in terms of sheer charisma and memorability it certainly rivals his mega-star making performance as "Jack Dawson" in Titanic. I liked Blood Diamond a great deal, but do not think it is a great film. A good movie? Yes. Very mainstream and formulaic, but it is raised up quite a bit by DiCaprio's character and his terrific realization of it. If I had read this script beforehand, I never would have thought of Leo for this role- possibly George Clooney or some other star known for "roguish charm," but not Leo. But now, having seen it, I can't imagine anybody else as "Danny Archer;" it is a fully realized, winning performance.Mr. Hounsou was wonderful as well, and I liked the chemistry between the two men in their scenes together. He was able to make the audience feel the gamut of emotions his character experiences during the course of the movie- pride and hope, fear, outrage, resignation, mistrust, desperation, and determination, and beautifully rises above the somewhat limiting way his role was written.I thought Ms. Connelly did as good a job as possible in her role as "the idealistic journalist who wants to make a difference." Her part was just a larger version of Joaquin Phoenix's in Hotel Rwanda. As always, I find she brings a certain dignity and intelligence to her performances and does not allow her incredible beauty to overshadow her acting. I thought she and Leo worked wonderfully together, as well, and along with Mr. Hounsou they make an engaging trio you can't help rooting for.In comparing it to other recent films about Africa, I didn't think this was quite as good as as Hotel Rwanda, but better than The Interpreter, The Constant Gardener, and The Last King of Scotland. I felt an emotional engagement with the characters I didn't experience in the latter three films. I found the script allowed my care for the characters to grow as the story progressed, and was not overly manipulative. At times it veered too much into standard action movie territory, with much violence and many "close calls" but would then be brought back into the realm of compelling human drama by a wonderfully acted, intimate scene.After reading some early negative comments, I was pleasantly surprised at my response to it. Compelling characters and the skillful use of a truly gripping global issue as the plot line make this a satisfying viewing experience- one that I would happily see again.

characterizations we've seen before, but it's the interaction that raises this film above the masses. Each character has an agenda that forces him or her to distrust everyone else. The paths that some relationships take to develop trust are believable, while others are equally believable in remaining eternally antagonistic. And through it all is the realization that while some characters may change their methodology and morals, none ever change their dreams. Each character fights for the goal to the bitter end. Such is human nature, and such is the conflict of Blood Diamond, the conflict of Africa. In the end, we are left to wonder if peace can ever be attained in such a world. And somehow we are left believing that maybe it can.

career. He startled us as a very young man with "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" before he fell with a serious case of Titanictis. Now, after a three a long and serious Scorsese cures, this spectacular actor makes me believe that we haven't seen anything yet. Remarkable. As remarkable as the soulful Djimon Hounsou who manages to give the film a visible soul. I was moved and yes, I must admit, surprised. Apart from the visual and interpretative prowess of "Blood Diamond" there is a realistic view of a third world country as shattering as the unforgettable one in "City Of God" Don't miss it.