Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Edward Zwick
Written by	Charles Leavitt
Produced by	Marshall Herskovitz Graham King Paula Weinstein Edward Zwick
Starring	Leonardo DiCaprio Djimon Hounsou Jennifer Connelly Michael Sheen Arnold Vosloo
Cinematography	Eduardo Serra
Edited by	Steven Rosenblum
Music by	James Newton Howard
Production companies	The Bedford Falls, Virtual Studios
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date	December 8, 2006 (2006-12-08)
Running time	143 minutes
Countries	Template:Film US Template:Film Germany
Languages	English Mende Krio Afrikaans
Budget	$100 million
Box office	$171,407,179

Blood Diamond is a 2006 drama film co-produced and directed by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world.

Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1996-1999, the film shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces. It also portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of people's hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections.

The film's ending, in which a conference is held concerning blood diamonds, is in reference to an actual meeting that took place in Kimberley, South Africa in 2000 and led to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which seeks to certify the origin of diamonds in order to curb the trade in conflict diamonds. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actor (DiCaprio) and Best Supporting Actor (Hounsou).

Plot

Mende fisherman, Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), is captured by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels during an invasion and subsequent massacre of his village in Shenge. Instead of cutting off his hands, Solomon is enslaved to work as a miner in the diamond fields under the command of warlord Captain Poison (David Harewood), while his son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers) is conscripted into the rebel forces and brainwashed into becoming a hardened killer. The RUF use the diamonds to fund their war effort, often trading them directly for weapons. One day, Solomon finds an enormous, pink diamond but is caught by Capt. Poison as he secretly buries it in the ground nearby. Moments later, government troops attack the mine and Capt. Poison is injured before he can get to the stone. Both he and Solomon are taken to prison in Freetown along with the rest of the rebels.

Meanwhile, Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a white Rhodesian mercenary and gunrunner, is arrested attempting to smuggle diamonds into Liberia. Archer had been transporting the diamonds to Afrikaner mercenary, Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo), his former commander in the 32 Battalion, the most decorated unit of the South African Border War made up of Angolan and Rhodesian soldiers and white South African officers. Coetzee is in turn employed by Tiara Diamond Company executive, Rudolph Van de Kaap (Marius Weyers) and his deputy, Rupert Simmons (Michael Sheen). Upon hearing of the pink diamond, Archer arranges for Solomon's release from prison; offering to help Solomon find his family if he leads Archer to the diamond. The RUF launches a massive assault on Freetown and crushes the government forces present, forcing Archer and Solomon to steal away from the city at night.

In Forécariah, Guinea, American journalist and humanitarian, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), allows Archer and Solomon to sneak into Kono with her press convoy, in exchange for information for her story exposing the flow of "blood diamonds" out of Africa. Archer provides proof that Van de Kaap controls the market by illegally stockpiling vast amounts of diamonds to increase the demand and keep the selling price high. The press convoy comes under attack by the RUF and the other news team members are killed. Archer, Solomon and Maddy narrowly escape and find their way to a Sierra Leone mercenary camp where an attack force, led nick welinski to a win

Archer and Solomon leave the camp to trek through the jungle while Maddy boards a plane carrying foreigners out of the conflict zone. Eventually, they reach Capt. Poison's mining camp, but Solomon is captured while trying to rescue a brainwashed Dia, who refuses to acknowledge his father. Archer calls in the coordinates to the South African mercenary force, also after the diamond, who launch an air strike via an Mi-24 Gunship. Amidst the chaos, Solomon kills Capt. Poison with a shovel and the remaining RUF rebels are captured. Col. Coetzee makes a dubious arrangement to split the sale with Archer, and threatens Dia's life, forcing Solomon to retrieve the stone. Archer is then mortally wounded when he preemptively kills Coetzee and two other soldiers, realizing they'll kill him, Solomon, and Dia once they procure the diamond. Dia holds Archer and Solomon at gunpoint, but, after an emotional talk, Solomon manages to convince his son of his own retained innocence and Dia agrees to return home with him.

The trio flee from Coetzee's men and make their way from the valley towards an airstrip atop a nearby ridge where Archer has prearranged to rendezvous with a pilot, Nabil (Jimi Mistry), in his GA8 Airvan. Before they reach the ridge, Archer collapses from his wounds and hands over the diamond to Solomon, then holds off the mercenaries as Solomon and Dia escape in the plane. Archer makes a final call to Maddy and asks her to help Solomon, before dying peacefully as he looks out upon the beautiful African landscape. In London, Solomon sells the diamond to Simmons for £2 million and the reunification of his family. Maddy secretly photographs the deal and later publishes a magazine piece exposing the trade in "conflict" or "blood" diamonds, detailing Van de Kaap's criminal actions and ruining him and his company. After admiring Archer's photograph in Maddy's article, Solomon tells of his experiences at a conference on blood diamonds in Kimberley, South Africa, his speech is met with a standing ovation as the film ends.

Cast

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Daniel "Danny" Archer
• Djimon Hounsou as Solomon Vandy
• Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen
• Kagiso Kuypers as Dia Vandy
• Arnold Vosloo as Colonel Coetzee
• Antony Coleman as Cordell Brown
• Benu Mabhena as Jassie Vandy
• Anointing Lukola as N'Yanda Vandy
• David Harewood as Captain Poison
• Basil Wallace as Benjamin Kapanay
• Jimi Mistry as Nabil
• Michael Sheen as Rupert Simmons
• Marius Weyers as Rudolf Van De Kaap
• Stephen Collins as Ambassador Walker
• Ntare Mwine as M'Ed
• Ato Essandoh as Captain Rambo

Reception

Blood Diamond was released to positive reviews from both critics and audiences. The review congregator site Rotten Tomatoes shows a 63% rating, with 127 favorable reviews out of 203, and an average rating of 6.4/10. As of April 2011 the film maintains a rating of 8.0 on the Internet Movie Database.

Controversies

When the plot of the film became public, De Beers, the South African diamond mining and trading company, maintained that the trade in conflict diamonds had been reduced from 4% to 1% of total purchases by the Kimberley Process. De Beers denied a suggestion that the company had pushed for the film to contain a disclaimer to the effect that the events it portrayed were fictional and outdated.

More recently, the New York Post reported that Warner Bros. Pictures had promised that 27 actors who were amputees would receive prosthetics once the film shoot was done. Several months after the completion of filming, however, the prosthetics had not been supplied, and the studio reportedly told the amputees they had to wait until the December 2006 release of the film to maximise public relations. In the meantime, a private charity from the Eastern Cape in South Africa assisted in supplying prosthetics to the amputees.

These allegations were countered by an article in L.A. Weekly, which stated that Warner Bros. had not promised the prosthetics, but that the cast and crew raised between $200,000 and $400,000 to begin a "Blood Diamond Fund," which was then matched by Warner Bros. and "administered by a Maputo-based international accountancy firm under the supervision of Laws and João Ribeiro, the production managers in Mozambique."

Soundtrack

Untitled

Blood Diamond: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. It was composed by James Newton Howard, and won the Soundtrack of the Year at the 2008 Classical BRIT Awards.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Blood Diamond Titles"	1:32
2.	"Crossing the Bridge"	1:41
3.	"Village Attack"	1:52
4.	"RUF Kidnaps Dia"	3:02
5.	"Archer & Solomon Hike"	1:55
6.	"Maddy & Archer"	1:56
7.	"Solomon Finds Family"	2:09
8.	"Fall of Freetown"	4:45
9.	"Did You Bury It?"	1:36
10.	"Archer Sells Diamond"	1:40
11.	"Goodbyes"	2:40
12.	"Your Son is Gone"	1:21
13.	"Diamond Mine Bombed"	4:31
14.	"Solomon's Helping Hand"	1:11
15.	"G8 Conference"	2:36
16.	"Solomon & Archer Escape"	2:12
17.	"I Can Carry You"	1:30
18.	"Your Mother Loves You"	2:24
19.	"Thought I'd Never Call?"	3:56
20.	"London"	2:38
21.	"Solomon Vandy"	2:11
22.	"Ankala" (Performed by Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars)	4:12
23.	"Baai" (Performed by Emmanuel Jal with Abd El Gadir Salim)	4:37
24.	"When Da Dawgs Come Out to Play" (Performed by Bai Burea, featuring Masta Kent and Bullet Rhymes)	3:19
Total length:		61:26

Home video

The DVD was released in Region 1 format on March 20, 2007. Both a single-disc and a two-disc version are available. High Definition versions on HD DVD and Blu-ray have also been released with a R rating in the USA and a rating of MA in Australia.

See also

• Blood diamond
• Postcolonialism
• Child Soldiers
• Sierra Leone Civil War
• Second Liberian Civil War

External links

• Official website
• Blood Diamond at IMDb
• Blood Diamond at AllMovie
• Blood Diamond at Rotten Tomatoes
• Blood Diamond at Metacritic
• Blood Diamond at Box Office Mojo
• 'SOS Children's Villages Canada' with Leonardo DiCaprio. SOS Children's Villages, Maputo Village, Mozambique. The children help as extra actors in the film.