BLOOD DIAMOND

"I like to get kissed before I get fucked."

There is no doubt about it any more, Leonardo DiCaprio can act. His straight man to Daniel Day-Lewis's twisted villain in GANGS OF NEW YORK was the beginning of his ascension to the upper echelon of today's elite group of young actors, and with his larger-than-life turn as Howard Hughes in THE AVIATOR and his implosively amazing (Oscar-worthy, in my opinion) turn as Billy Costigan in this year's best film, THE DEPARTED, Leo has really proven himself. He can now add BLOOD DIAMOND as another notch to his impressive docket.

In BLOOD DIAMOND he is Danny Archer, a mercenary who runs conflict diamonds out of Africa in the late-90s. He begins to use a local fisherman, Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), offering him the chance to find his rebel-kidnapped family in exchange for a priceless diamond. Well, actually far from priceless (expensive enough to get Archer out of Africa for good).

The film has a pretty solid plot. It offers the oppurtunity for a great action movie as well as a very convincing message. The 140-minute running time hurts both of these concepts though. While many action sequences are staged and delivered brilliantly with a ferocious bite, they are mostly in the first half. The second act sees the message weighing the movie down: the blood diamond industry is huge and nobody wants to really help the problem.

While it is formulaic in the same vein that THE LAST SAMURAI (director Edward Zwick's last movie) was, in the sense that the white man rushes to save the foreign (or black, in this case) man's troubles. The message is a bit repetitive and overcooked, but the film overall is saved by DiCaprio and Hounsou's performances. As Archer, DiCaprio is explosive, a man who faces danger often and whose formerly steel-clad morals are being melted by Vandy. Though it is another noble man-character for Hounsou, he plays the part with pent-up fury, a man who would journey across the world and give up eeverything for his son. Their explosive acting is the real reason to see this movie. Jennifer Connelly is also in it, as a journalist looking to exploit the tragedy of Sierra Leone in order to make a difference, but her character and her performance are pretty bland, and she has nothing on her counterparts.

B