Issue-tainment. Puts the issue of conflict diamonds in the public eye. Whether or not that makes it a great drama is a slightly different question.
Blood Diamond (2006)
Runtime: 2 hrs 23 mins
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Stephen Collins, Jimi Mistry
Producer: Gillian Gorfil, Marshall Herskovitz, Graham King
Composer: James Newton Howard
DVD Info
Release:
Mar 7, 2007
HD DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Widescreen
Audio:
- Dolby TrueHD 5.1 - English
- Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 - English, French, Spanish
- Subtitles - English, French/Quebecois, Spanish
Additional Release Material:
- Audio Commentaries - Edward Zwick - Director
- Documentaries - "Blood on the Stone"
- Featurettes - 1. In-Movie Experience: Embark on an epic journey with Director Edward Zwick charting the emotional and filmmaking challenges of BLOOD DIAMOND
- 2. "Becoming Archer"
- 3. "Journalism on the Front Line"
- 4. "Inside the Siege of Freetown"
- Music Videos - Nas - "Shine On Em"
- Trailer - Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Features:
- Weblinks
Reviews
Zwick does a fine job in combining a broad range of elements and turning them into a compulsive and thought-provoking adventure and is aided by beautiful cinematography.
The issues may be simply put, but the brilliant action sequences engage us viscerally.
DiCaprio deserves his Oscar nomination for the breathtaking intensity of his performance.
The best thing about it is the convincing acting by DiCaprio and Hounsou.
A comparatively honest effort from Hollywood but one fatally weakened by the familiar scent of compromise in its final reels.
This is the thinking man's thriller. You want in-depth background? Google it.
Some will dismiss it as "typical Hollywood", yet that isn't always a bad thing. In so many movies, destruction and loss are dwelt upon because they are irreducible truths. But survival is a truth, too, and this film pays it often stirring witness.
While there’s some serious sag between the action scenes, this is a blockbuster with brains and the kind of film to make us all think twice on our next visit to the jeweller.
In the ongoing conflict between Hollywood glamour and telling the truth about Africa, it's the former that wins.
Gripping action and an excellent DiCaprio cannot disguise what is, essentially, an effective, if shallow, exposition of a hugely complex global issue.
So bleak and depressing you will never look at a gemstone again without idly wondering how many lives it might have cost.
If you can ignore Zwick's colonial bombast, Blood Diamond is quite a ride: a gripping tale of greed and exploitation set against a background that seems constantly on the verge of explosive violence.
Great performances, provocative ideas and gripping action scenes fall prey to Hollywood logic and pat storytelling in the final hour.
It doesn’t entirely evade the issue at its core – conflict diamonds – in favour of pure action by way of guns and planes, thrills and spills; but it hardly embraces the subject fully either.
Slightly too long and not quite as worthy as it thinks it is, this is still an entertaining, well acted thriller that manages to raise some important political issues in between the action sequences.
Great performances, provocative ideas and gripping action scenes fall prey to Hollywood logic and pat storytelling in the final hour.
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