2006 / Edward Zwick > And Hollywood preaches on: While this is supposed to be a lesson in how diamonds are bad for the world, Zwick forgets to erase the excesses off the drawing board. The violence here is generally appropriate, but the story comes to a standstill too often. Cutting off 45 minutes from the film would do it wonders (because I’m certain we’ll survive without hearing DiCaprio wheeze for 25 of them).
The melodrama is suffocating, with blatant right/wrong arguments that are just too silly. For that, the story itself is fairly inaccurate and makes the Sierra Leone rebels look unnecessarily barbaric. Nonetheless, the first hour is quite strong and for a while I was thinking that this may be one of the better films of the year. DiCaprio impresses even with a weak script, but Connelly fails to show up. Hounsou is effective. It could have done more, but for that, it ought to have tried less.