Blood Diamond

A queasy enterprise all round. Not just the business of smuggling diamonds, in trade for arms that fuel African civil wars, but the business of making preachy thrillers. When this film opens with a frightening scene of child soldiers on a rampage in Sierre Leone in 1999, you are receiving important news viscerally, but when the chases and fireballs continue you are being subjected to would-be blockbuster entertainment. And don’t get me started on the juiceless romance between Leonardo DiCaprio (otherwise okay as a Rhodesian soldier of fortune) and Jennifer Connolly (otherwise ludicrous as a crusading reporter.) Nor on the waste of Djimon Hounsou as an epitome of African suffering and nobility (just notice how he ends up being applauded without being allowed to speak a word.) Edward Zwick makes a film that is pure Hollywood flapdoodle, interspersed with earnest lectures on the dirty backstory of bling. I admit I was a bit drowsy while watching this, but far from waking me up, this high-calorie, low-nutrition concoction was dozey rather than a doozy. (2006, dvd, n.) *5+* (MC-63.)