Blood Diamond [Blu-ray] | ![Blood Diamond [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51jfiu5%2Bw8L._SL500_.jpg)
| Actors: Leonard Dicaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $28.99
Buy Used: $6.32
You Save: $22.67 (78%)
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Rating:  304 reviews
Sales Rank: 7447
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: Afrikaans (Original Language), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Blu-ray
Region: 0
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 143 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: BR111767
UPC: 085391117674
EAN: 0085391117674
ASIN: B000N0WCLC
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: June 5, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Leonardo DiCaprio puts a handsome face on an ugly industry: In parts of Africa, diamond mining fuels civil warfare, killing thousands of innocents and drafting preteen children as vicious soldiers. DiCaprio (The Departed) plays Danny Archer, a white African soldier-turned-diamond-smuggler who gets wind of a large raw jewel found by Solomon Vandy, a native fisherman (Djimon Hounsou, In America) recently escaped from enslavement by a brutal rebel leader. Archer offers a deal: He'll help Vandy find his war-scattered family if Vandy will share the diamond with him. Drawn into this web of exploitation is journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly, Little Children), who agrees to help if Archer will tell her the details of how conflict diamonds make their way into the hands of the corporations who sell them to the Western world. DiCaprio is compelling because he never flinches from Archer's utter ruthlessness; Archer ends up doing the morally justifiable thing, but only because his desperate greed has led him to it. Hounsou and Connelly, though saddled with all the moral and political speeches, rise above the cant and keep the movie's treacherously formulaic plot rooted in human characters. But in the end, the story won't stick with you as much as the dead stillness in the child soldiers' eyes; the horror of African civil strife refuses to be contained by Blood Diamond's uplifting message--and the movie is all the more potent as a result. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 299 more reviews...
 Blood Diamond DVD June 29, 2009
J. Schmitz
Movie came quickly - there are a few skips in it - but over all it was good.
A pleasant surprise. June 28, 2009
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006)
There are good actors and there are bad actors, but rarely has one person embodied both as well as Leonardo DiCaprio. And oddly, there's a sharp dividing line between the good and the bad, and that, of course, is Titanic. Before 1997, it seemed DiCaprio was incapable of making a bad movie. They weren't all brilliant by any stretch of the imagination (The Basketball Diaries, really), but he was always brilliant in them. Then came Titanic, as awful a blockbuster as has come down the pike in ages, and DiCaprio's career sank faster than that stupid boat. I spent nine years after that wondering what in the world had happened to the actor I'd once thought was the best thing since Johnny Depp. And then, my god, 2006. Leo, you are forgiven for every overblown and undertalented performance from Titanic to The Aviator for giving us The Departed and Blood Diamond in the same year. While, once again, neither was a great film, DiCaprio has once again shown the acting chops that made my jaw drop in such films as What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Total Eclipse, and, yes, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.
For all that DiCaprio's presence was touted in this flick, however, he's not the main character. That would be Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou, recently of Push, nominated for an Oscar for his role here), a fisherman in Sierra Leone, by the Revolutionary United Front, rebels who are supporting their war against the government by the sale of blood diamonds (which these days go under the more euphemistic name of "conflict diamonds"; of course, this removes us from the idea that people shed blood for them) and set to work in the diamond mines. While Solomon is working in the mines, two very big things happen: first, his son is also abducted by the RUF, and second, he finds a large, rare pink diamond and hides it from the RUF. Through various machinations, he is rescued from the mines and taken to prison in Freetown. Enter Danny Archer (DiCaprio), a Rhodesian mercenary involved in the arms-for-diamonds trade. He had a cache of diamonds taken from him when he was thrown into prison, and he's sure that his contact on the arms side of the deal, Colonel Coetzee (Fire & Ice's Arnold Vosloo), will be looking for reparation. He hears a guard from the mine taunting Vandy about the diamond, and comes up with a plan. This involves getting Vandy sprung from prison and offering to help him find his family again in exchange for the diamond. That requires the services of someone who knows how to find people, and in this case, that's reporter Maddy Bowen (Requiem for a Dream's Jennifer Connelly). Once the three of them get together, things start going wrong, not only among their little group, but with outside forces as well. Nothing can ever be easy--and let's not forget that while he doesn't know it, we know that Solomon's son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers in his first feature role) has also been taken by the RUF...
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this cast is that every major player is known for inconsistency in acting prowess. It's already been addressed in DiCaprio's case. Hounsou has been nominated for Academy Awards both for this and for In America, but, really. Constantine? Or even worse, Aragon? And for every Dark City and Requiem for a Dream, Connelly's resume, there's a Hulk. My hypothesis is that all three of them are more tractable for certain directors (though obviously I don't know this for sure). Zwick, of course, is a director well-known for pulling the last ounce of greatness out of an actor; after all, it was Zwick's Glory who took an affable TV and character actor named Denzel Washington and made him into an A-list superstar. His Leaving Normal was one of the highlights of Meg Tilly's acting career; Legends of the Fall, while not well-received upon release, has become an enduring favorite of Brad Pitt fans. This is a guy who knows what he's doing in the director's chair. Charles Leavitt's screenplay is both well-researched and snappy (though it's been said by some Sierra Leoneans who have seen the film that while it's generally accurate, it should be remembered that this sort of thing is only a small part of the greater story of the Sierra Leonean civil war), never degenerating into It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Sierra Leonean style, as it so easily could. And Eduardo Serra's cinematography... oh, my. (I'll put it this way: it was good enough to get him tabbed as the cinematographer on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Both parts.) James Newton Howard's score was nominated for a Grammy, for pete's sake. There are all kinds of reasons to appreciate this movie, and few to complain about it (the ending, coincidentally, puts one in mind of Double Indemnity, reviewed above, and has that same artificially-noble feel to it); even if you've always hated Leonardo DiCaprio's acting (and I have always found that those who do were unaware that he made movies before Titanic, which is kind of like not knowing about Keanu Reeves' pre-Bill and Ted output), this is one to check out. Maybe it'll change your mind, and let you see what the rest of us have known all along. ****
A solid movie June 28, 2009
Harry M. Shin (Livermore, CA USA)
1. Others have already written about the pros / cons of this movie; overall a definite worth see.
 Leo Shines June 16, 2009
Casey Lischak
Blood Diamond is another movie which showcases how great an actor DiCaprio is. At this point I will see any movie he is in because more often than not he chooses movies that I enjoy.
He plays Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler and mercenary, who has made his livelihood engaging in activites that show him as a rather distatsteful charactor. He is juxtaposed with Djimon Hounsou who plays Solomon Vandy, a man caught in the conflict of his country and Blood Diamonds.
Over the course of the movie Archer does change, and though portions were predictable, it was still well down. There is violence throughout the movie, and some have criticized that the movie may have been a bit too "moralistic" in the telling of this tale. To me it was just a very good story. Despite any shortcomings, this movie is worth it just to see DiCaprio and Hounsou - both deliver stand out performances that are worth seeing and carry the movie.
Blood + Diamond = A Great Movie May 24, 2009
Khiem Nguyen (Louisiana, USA)
Great is the only word that can be used to describe this movie. This movie makes me think about life & feelings. You should have this movie.
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