Welcome to the socially conscious age of Hollywood movies, where a studio can function like an NGO, actors become torch-bearers for humanitarian causes and a film serves as both a multimillion-dollar action-adventure and public service announcement.

Set during the latter stages of the civil war in Sierra Leone circa 1999, Blood Diamond takes a strong moral stance on the issue of conflict diamonds. The precious diamonds were (and still are) dug up by rebel militias in Africa, then sold in exchange for arms to middlemen or smugglers, who then peddle the diamonds up the food chain until they are sold in stores next to legitimate diamonds. The blood, it would seem, touches nearly everyone’s hands, from African militiamen to diamond sellers to Western consumers.

In a conference call with The Diamondback, actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou discussed their experiences on the set; in a separate call, director Edward Zwick and Jennifer Connelly spoke about their involvement in the film.

“If we weren’t in Africa, you know, a lot of what you see up on screen wouldn’t be there,” DiCaprio (The Departed) says.

“The people in Maputo were so supportive and we had such a great rapport,” Hounsou (The Island) adds, “And [we had] great support from them in telling their stories so.”

As a native African born in Benin, Hounsou jumped at the opportunity to play Solomon Vandy, a Sierra Leonean fisherman whose family gets torn apart by the war.

“Well the nature of the story, you know … this is not just about the trade of diamonds; it’s also the issues of child soldiers, the displacement of the people throughout neighboring countries that are affected also by the outcome of the conflict areas,” Hounsou says.

Spending five months filming in Africa, the cast and crew of Blood Diamond set up a fund in Mozambique for the local people, with the studio matching the money.

“Right now we’re working with Amnesty International and Global Witness,” DiCaprio says. “There’s a lot of situations in Africa and a lot of people that need help but … we’ve all gotten involved with them to try to make some improvements.”

“Doing a movie like this, you can’t help but be affected,” he adds.

Connelly (Little Children) also describes how the film’s cast and crew could help those living in Mozambique.

“A film company has great resources,” she says. “We could prepare a road and build a classroom, we could fix a sewage system or dig a well, but more than that, [our goal] really was to bring in millions, up to $40 or $50 million, into local economies. That’s real cash into a local economy.”

Many others working on the film felt the same way as Connelly, Zwick says.

“Jenny [Connelly] and so many others on the cast and crew really felt that there was a need to do something,” he says. “To give something back, knowing all the while that whatever we did would only be insignificant compared to the needs that we saw all around us.”

And so, if there is something positive to be taken from Blood Diamond, it is the fact that the film brings attention and support to the African victims of war and illegal trade. However, providing aid to the people of Mozambique and championing social causes, though admirable, does not necessarily translate to good filmmaking.

In their efforts to address the civil war in Sierra Leone and conflict diamonds, Zwick and screenwriter Charles Leavitt revert to what Hollywood does best – predictable characters with obvious motives in a flood of blood, explosions and sheer ethnocentrism.

DiCaprio stars as Danny Archer, a South African ex-army man, currently smuggling diamonds to the rebels fighting the Sierra Leonean government.

“I was compelled to play a character from South Africa,” DiCaprio says. “Somebody who was so opportunistic, so narcissistic … it was unlike anything that I’ve ever done before; certainly a departure from other roles that I’ve taken on.”

Unfortunately, DiCaprio fails to ever make Archer believable as the selfish, morally bankrupt character the filmmakers so desperately want him to be. In a film so deeply concerned with the barely distinguishable line between good and evil, the players are overwhelmingly easy to identify as good guys or bad guys.

After a botched smuggling attempt on the Liberian border, Archer catches wind of a rumor that a local fisherman, Vandy, has found and hidden and large diamond. Vandy cooperates with Archer only in order to find his family, separated from him during a village raid by the rebels. The two meet up with sexy journalist Maddy Bowen (Connelly), who helps them cut through the red tape barring them from the diamond and Vandy’s family. Those concerned with ethical journalism, please avert your eyes.

And so the adventure begins. The bullets fly early and often, bombs go off and buildings go up in flames and tons of people get brutally massacred on screen. Blood Diamond keeps one foot solidly and graphically in the action genre and the other in sociopolitical melodrama, never finding comfortable ground in either.

The many parties involved in Sierra Leone (government, villagers, militia, diamond sellers and smugglers) are depicted only at face value – we are given a very shallow treatment of the civil war, just enough to be appalled at the selling of illegal diamonds.

So despite how just the cause is, Hollywood has managed to trivialize another Third-World conflict into a formulaic sob story. Even as a cheap thrill, Blood Diamond fails to catch the slightest glimmer of emotion poured into the behind-the-scenes charity work done for the film.

Contact reporter Zachary Herrmann at

herrmanndbk@gmail.com.