Blood Diamond

Geronimo1967

Jul 24, 2026

7/10

With the new millennium dawning, fisherman "Solomon" (Djimon Hounsou) is eagerly anticipating the day when his young son "Dia" (Kagiso Kuypers) will realise his dream of becoming a doctor. That idyll is sharply destroyed, though, when his Sierra Leone village is beset by rebels who capture him and force him to work in their diamond mines. Not long into his travails, he discovers a very valuable blood stone which his brute of a commander sees him hide. Before he can act upon his suspicions, the army arrive and in the mêlée both men are captured and imprisoned. The ertswhile gangster is blabbing to anyone that will listen about "Solomon" and his priceless jewel, and that attracts the attention of smuggler "Archer" (Leonardo Di Caprio). He knows that the one thing more important to "Solomon" than the stone is his family, so he has him released with a promise that if he retrieves the stone for him, he shall ensure he is reconciled in safety with his family. Does he even know if that family is still alive? Does "Solomon" remember where he buried the stone? Well on the former front, "Archer" recruits the services of American journalist "Maddy" (Jennifer Connelly) to do some digging whilst he and his new best friend head across some dangerous terrain to hopefully do a little digging of their own. Of course, these two men are not the only two seeking the prize and so with danger lurking around every bush, their perilous hunt is well and truly on. I thought Connelly acquitted herself quite well here as she juggled the gritty, if a little naive, determination of "Maddy" with a growing realisation - which she could share with the world - of the brutality of an industry that will stop at little to procure those ugly looking pieces of rock that the masters in Antwerp can turn into one of the planet's truly global commodities. It's essentially the two-hander between Di Caprio and Hounsou that captivates here. The former delivering a portrayal of a shrewd and resourceful man whose only thoughts are for himself and for the prize! Hounsou, on the other hand, has way more humanity to depict and yet as they travel there is something of the opposites attract developing between them. Mistrust and disrespect become something unexpectedly magnetic. The dynamic of their initial inter-dependence changes as these two characters start to understand how the other ticked, and with both under constant threat from plenty who would readily betray them it makes for quite a tensly directed and taut political thriller in which the value of human life - or the lack of it - is writ large. The detail in the production design, the pyrotechnics and the combat scenes are convincingly staged to give us an almost claustrophobic series of scenarios trapping these men in the vast wilderness of an unforgiving West Africa that is needed by greedy and powerful men to fund their Rolls Royce and caviar lifestyles.