Blood Diamond (2006) - Fundamentally flawed, unsuccessful Africa-venture with important issues at its core

♥♥♥

Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio in crisis on the poster for Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond

QUICK REVIEW:

A white Zimbabwean, Archer, smuggles conflict diamonds out of Sierra Leone, but now crosses tracks with an attractive journalist and a local man, whose family disappears in the country's civil war.
I am generous in giving the flawed Blood Diamond these 3 ♥'s. The film is a mix of a Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)-like character in a Romancing the Stone (1984)-like adventure with real, African horrors behind every corner of the tale. The film is depressing and overly long at 143 minutes. And predictable most of the way.
But the main problem is Leonardo DiCaprio's (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) character, our defeatist 'hero', who in real life is a really terrible crook. He is very hard to accept as 'our guy', and the script doesn't seem to acknowledge this. The worst scene is the one in which SPOILER he orders an air bombing and thereafter jumps heroically around amongst the deadly bombs. - Pretty infuriating stuff!
Djimon Hounsou's (The Tempest (2010)) character would have been much better suited as the protagonist. As it is, he provides the film's few moving moments, albeit soaked in overwrought pathos.
Blood Diamond cannot withstand scrutiny altogether and is fundamentally unsatisfying: Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind (2001)) is never with DiCaprio, which is a letdown; the climax is, - most anticlimactically, - SPOILER a phone conversation among the two of them(!); and the final scene of Hounsou getting hailed in Europe by a room full of white people is unbelievable: Where the !Zx?=!#! is his family? In Sierra Leone? Someplace else in Africa?
I give Blood Diamond its full 3rd ♥ just for giving attention to some important topics; child soldiers and blood diamonds. But it is still irrevocably a bad movie.
It is directed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai (2003)), who is now engaged in Pawn Sacrifice (2015), a film about a famous chess game (really!) and The American Can (2015), a Katrina survival drama with Will Smith.

Related post:

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 100 mil. $
Box office: 171.4 mil. $
= Even Steven

What do you think of Blood Diamond?
Do you know of any better films that deal with child soldiers and/or blood diamonds?