Blood Diamond

A film set in Sierra Leone in 1999. Solomon is a fisherman. His village is raided, his family runs, and he is taken to a mining site. He finds a large pink diamond in the river. He buries it without showing anyone, and at that moment a raid begins. Danny is a Rhodesian smuggler. He moves diamonds across the border to the European market and hears Solomon's story in prison. From there the film is a search. Civil war, a refugee camp, a journalist, an air attack and a mountain road. The diamond is not Solomon's only concern. His son has been taken by the rebels and is being raised as a child soldier. What the narrative is interested in is not adventure but a chain: the film shows step by step how the stone leaves the mine, crosses the border and is sold in a shop window. The child soldier section is the hardest part and the film puts it at the centre rather than the side. The journalist is the voice conducting the argument; she talks about how to hold a reader's interest, which is a comment on the film itself. An international meeting near the end is real. The certification system set up to control conflict diamonds is named in the closing. It was shot in Mozambique and South Africa. Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou were nominated for Academy Awards. Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly and Arnold Vosloo are in the cast. Edward Zwick directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes hard action drama based on real events. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the narrative putting a white character at its centre; that criticism has been made since release.