by MARK SLUTSKY

Anyone who’s done even the most cursory reading about the diamond industry will tell you that those sparkly rocks can come at a pretty high price, and we’re not just talking “two months’ salary.” Diamonds that come from African war zones like Sierra Leone—so-called “conflict diamonds”—are used to finance devastating civil wars, with proceeds going to arm and equip guerrilla armies, with their drugged-up child soldiers, or the just-as-bad government forces.

The ever socially conscious and, frankly, frequently pompous filmmaker Edward Zwick (Glory, The Siege) takes on the issue in his latest, Blood Diamond.

Djimon Hounsou plays Solomon Vandy, a Sierra Leone fisherman whose village is overrun by rebels; those who they don’t kill or maim, they kidnap to work in diamond mines, or, in the case of the easier-to-control children, train, drug and arm as soldiers. Sifting a river for the precious stones one day, he comes across an extremely rare large, pink-tinted diamond, which he manages to hide just before being captured and thrown in the clink by government soldiers. There, he meets amoral smuggler Danny (Leonardo DiCaprio), a humourless Han Solo type who deals in gems and guns (and the only one in the movie really gifted with an actual character).

The two end up forming an uneasy partnership as they head back to retrieve the stone: DiCaprio wants the loot, Hounsou wants his family back, and plucky American reporter Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) just wants a big scoop.

Though you’ve got to hand it to Zwick for not softening the material—the movie is relentlessly grim and at times really horrifying—something just feels wrong about approaching the subject in this way. Blood Diamond is essentially a big exciting action thriller, and explosive set pieces just don’t seem as fun when the heroes are shooting at children with Kalashnikovs.

This is the truth about any action movie, really—as in “real life” they’re all horrible tales of tragedy told against a backdrop of senseless violence. Nobody wants to see Indiana Jones go to Auschwitz. Not to say that films shouldn’t address this stuff, but using a supposedly entertaining, cornball genre to do so seems like a real miscalculation.

Blood Diamond opens this Friday, Dec. 8

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