Bloody Diamonds!

Sickness kept me out of movie theaters for a couple of weeks. And when I finally felt up to going out, what did I see? Blood Diamond. Big mistake.

Writer Charles Leavitt and director Edward Zwick tried to create an entertaining thriller and a lesson on the diamond industry’s horrible toll on African lives. But a bad thriller makes worse agitprop.

Blood Diamond centers around fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) and his struggles to reunite his family, separated when evil rebels sack and destroy his village. Solomon is a sort of third-world version of the sympathetic everyman that filmmakers have centered thrillers around since Hitchcock refined the genre. Except that he’s a saint–too perfect and virtuous to identify, or even sympathize, with. And since he’s black, African, and played by an actor with a difficult-to-pronounce name, Hollywood provides us with two white movie stars (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly) who fall in love while helping Solomon.

Actually, DiCaprio’s Danny Archer isn’t trying to help anyone; he’s a self-centered and untrustworthy smuggler who attaches himself onto Solomon for purely mercenary reasons. I don’t think I’m giving anything away in telling you that Solomon’s predicament and Connelly’s gorgeous eyes melt that hard exterior to reveal the diamond smuggler’s heart of gold.

The plot involves a giant diamond that Solomon finds and hides while working as a slave in the rebels’ diamond mine. Danny becomes Solomon’s protector because he wants the diamond. So do the rebels and the army, resulting in enough automatic weapons fire to satisfy Rambo. Not that the rebels and the army need a large diamond MacGuffin to fire off huge rounds of ammunition; they do it for no apparent reason beyond the joy of killing innocent bystanders.

Because this is a “serious” thriller, the violence isn’t toned down or glorified. It looks ugly and scary. But that makes it all the more ridiculous when our heroes come out of one battle or massacre after another unscathed. Maybe the bad guys need to arm themselves with kryptonite.

Speaking of realism, let’s take a moment to consider Jennifer Connelly’s role, investigative reporter Maddy Bowen. When she discovers that the guy hitting on her in a bar is involved with illegal activities, she tells him exactly what she’s looking for and asks for sensitive information that no criminal in his right mind would give a stranger–even a stranger that looks like Jennifer Connelly. The next time she runs into him, she drags him onto a dance floor and rubs her body against him while pretty much begging for a scoop. If the character is sufficiently badly written, even Jennifer Connelly can’t give a good performance.

Read up on the diamond trade and you’ll feel sorry for its victims. See Blood Diamond and you’ll feel sorry for the audience.

But you won’t feel sorry about catching any of these movies:

Recommended: Lord of the Rings Triple Bill, Castro, Saturday, 1:30. Three long movies, one short review: Peter Jackson’s nine-hour retelling of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy (eleven hours in the extended editions, which won’t be shown here) is surely one of the most ambitious film-making projects ever completed. And he pulls it off, sticking close enough to the books to keep most literary fans happy without getting ridiculous about it. Whereas Tolkien makes you believe in Middle Earth by offering detailed histories and languages, Jackson depends on art direction, special effects, and the natural beauty of his native New Zealand. The films are massive, spectacular, and action-packed, yet always focused on a handful of decent, simple souls forced to become unwilling heroes.

Recommended: Casablanca, Castro, Wednesday. What can I say? You’ve either already seen it or know you should. Let me just add that no one who worked on Casablanca thought they were making a masterpiece; it was just another movie coming off the Warner assembly line. But somehow, just this once, everything came together perfectly. On a double-bill with The African Queen.

Recommended: The African Queen, Castro, Wednesday. Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Africa, and Technicolor all make for splendid entertainment in John Huston’s romantic comedy action adventure. The outbreak of World War I traps Bogart’s working-class drunk and Hepburn’s prim and proper missionary on a small boat up an African river with little chance of survival. So naturally they fall in love. On a double-bill with Casablanca.