blood diamond

Last week with all the photos I didn't post a review of my weekly DVD rental and today is a little less manic, so here it is. I'll probably do this weeks rental tomorrow.

For some reason I went into this expecting it to be rather bad.

I don't know why I thought that, but I did, and overall I'd say I was wrong - it was actually pretty good.

There are some slightly patchy elements, though.

One of the most glaring is the question who's the star? Who's story is this?

Well, Di Caprio is the biggest name and you could also therefore argue that he's the star. He's not the nicest of characters, so I guess anti-hero might be the best phrase to use, but ultimately in the end he doesn't' feel like the star - he's more of a scene stealing support.

Similarly, the framing device for the whole film is that of a family that's torn apart by the civil war. A civil war that's fuelled by an illegal diamond trade.

But as I say, it's more of a framing device - it lends impetus to the story and allows us to follow a thread that lets us get a grip on the real story, but it's also at many times a secondary element. The father, whose looking for his family and then specifically his son who's been taken by the rebels adds a lot of emotional depth, but he and it also don't feel like the star.

The female journalist takes a supporting role, so what about that title element - the blood diamond?

Well again, it's not really the start of the show. It's the McGuffin - the thing everyone is searching for and chasing, but in many senses what it actually is is irrelevant.

And I would also argue that the whole idea of corporate greed, the civil war, political machinations and man's inhumanity to man that form powerful elements to the story are also not quite the star.

The star, in my opinion, was Africa.

In a David Lean Lawrence of Arabia type happening, it seems the film falls in love with Africa more than it does the story or the players in the actual movie. And this is an Africa of equal parts beauty and dynamism as it is brutality and cruelty.

So yeah, I really quite enjoyed the film. They only bit I didn't like came towards the end. The film's violence was portrayed quite realistically up until a helicopter attack that's towards the end. for some reason it suddenly got very 'Hollywood' at that point with lots of squibs and earth exploding up as bullets hit.

This kinda lost my respect a bit, as it came across more like an episode of the A-Team :/.