Blood Diamond

Went to see Blood diamond last week. I was actually quite impressed. It gives a pretty scary glimpse of the Sierra Leon civil war. It does a pretty good job at shocking you and generally convincing you that African civil wars are pretty nasty (lots of chopping off arms with machetes). It also goes into child soldiers and how kids are brainwashed/made to fight.

There's also a nice bit of ambiguity about the role of westerners (or whites in general). First there are the mercenaries who are 'employed' to clear fight/clear things up, and also smuggle diamonds out of the country. Second there are the diamond cartels who help indirectly fund the whole thing and lastly the role of journalists who report on the wars. I especially like the journalists, who are portrayed as a mix of do-gooder/adrenalin junkies, who don't really believe that what they do makes a difference, and are mainly looking for 'something new' (rather than the usual pictures of hungry/dead people). There's a very nice scene where a press bus arrives at the site of an ambush and all of the journalists pile out and start filming.... its only after a minute that the hero (not a journalist) actually goes to help the injured people.

The kind of depressing take home message, especially from the journalist parts, is that, in the end its hard to move people for more than a short time, sometimes you can shock people enough to get them to donate money, but mostly they will have forgotten about the shocking things they saw on the news by the next day.

On a lighter note, I have to admit that I was also impressed that Leonardo DiCaprio can actually act, and does a very good South African/Zimbabwean accent.

So worth watching, as long as you are not prone to nightmares.