Film Screening 15th March, 2007

Poster for Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond 

8:00 PM, 15th March, 2007

  • MA
  • 143 mins
  • 2006
  • Edward Zwick
  • Charles Leavitt
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly

If youre looking for a new way of feeling guilty about your 21st century Western lifestyle, after stressing about warming the globe with your energy consumption and burning the Earth's resources in your SUV, then grab onto your bling, middle-class crusaders, and welcome to Blood Diamond.Because this time, the issue is diamonds, and what the illegal trade is doing to countries like Sierra Leone. Danny Archer (DiCaprio, doing his best "Seth Efricen" accent) is a diamond dealer, who gets a whiff of a large stone that would finance him enough to get out of the game. To retrieve the precious, he must team up with a frantic fisherman trying to rescue his son from mercenary gangs (Hounsou) and a reporter trying to get to the truth (Connelly).Ed Zwick has never been a favourite director of mine - I've never forgiven him for Legends of the Fall, and many of his films have only been rescued by great performances (Ken Watanabe in The Last Samurai, Denzel Washington in Glory). But he does better here, and Blood Diamond is entertaining as well as intelligent. Hounsou is in top form here as well as DiCaprio (and for those who have seen The Queen, you may be interested in how far Tony Blair (aka Michael Sheen) has fallen in recent times!). All good reasons to see Blood Diamond.'

Travis Cragg