Blood Diamond.

"A big, stupid, lumbering animal, Blood Diamond is another tasteless Hollywood travelogue set in deepest darkest Africa that feigns human rights pretense (as well as a pretense to reality), applauding itself whenever it can—and literally in its final scene," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "The film's humility is less recognizable than its humanity."

Philippe Diaz, director of The Empire in Africa, a documentary about the rebels in Sierra Leone, begs to differ with Blood Diamond's take on the civil war there.

"Just as the power of the entertainment industry was harnessed to create a desire, it has now been turned around to spotlight the high cost of that desire." In the New York Times, Marc Santora has a piece on the relationship between diamonds and the movies.

Kevin Maher in the London Times: "We've had ethical clothing, ethical banking and ethical coffee growing. And now we're starting to see the emergence of ethical movie-making, too."

Updated through 12/10.

Updates, 12/4: "Given that the movie doesn't have a single narrative surprise - you always know where it's going and why, commercially speaking, it's going there - it's amazing how good Blood Diamond is," writes New York's David Edelstein. "I guess that's the surprise."

Nick Schager: "[T]his putrid piece of Oscar bait offers up dunderheaded political speechifying and noisy combat which alternate via a stop-and-pop structure: talk, interrupted by gunfire and running, followed by more talk, then more gunfire and running, and so on until every main character is either dead, a celebrated crusader, or a noble savage deserving a slow-clap standing ovation at the G8 summit."

Daniel Eagan: "The film offers deeply focused performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou and a horrifying vision of the chaos of modern-day warfare, as well as several unnecessarily off-putting speeches that scold viewers about events largely out of their control. The effect is sometimes like watching a lavishly mounted public service announcement."

Updates, 12/5: The New Yorker's David Denby finds Diamond "essentially a romantic adventure story with politics in the background - an old-fashioned movie, I suppose, but exciting and stunningly well made."

"[M]edia outlets depend on full-page advertising from the diamond cartel," which is why you're not seeing DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly as much as you would were this a different film, explains Nikki Finke. Worse, though, "doing a great job of discrediting himself is Russell Simmons who spent the past week trotting around Africa on a trip paid for by the De Beers-led Diamond Council and clouding the conflict diamonds issue with pathological self-promotion since he hawks his own line of overpriced bling."

"It's remarkable that a movie presumably opposed to Western exploitation of Africa exhibits a heartbeat only when slaughtering its anonymous, dark-skinned extras," writes Nathan Lee. "To be sure, there's splendid momentum to the havoc here, a real thrill in the quickness of death leaping from the jungle, machine gun fire rattling through the ominous bass of gangsta rap. Such excitements would be less unsettling had their spark lit on any larger idea than 'Whoa, shit is messed up in Africa.'"

Also in the Voice, Ella Taylor on The Empire in Africa: "Where [Blood Diamond director Edward] Zwick fingers diamond moguls and the rebel Revolutionary United Front as chief culprits in the carnage, Diaz rushes to the defense of the RUF, which he sees as betrayed by a puppet government put in place by a United Nations bent on squeezing the rebels with food and weapon embargoes. Diaz's sympathy for the RUF may or may not be symptomatic of the leftist tendency to sanctify anything that calls itself a revolutionary front."

Updates, 12/6: Online listening tip. Zwick is Elvis Mitchell's guest on The Treatment.

"Edward Zwick is such a terrible filmmaker, I honestly don't even know where to start," starts Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "[W]hat's most annoying about Zwick's oeuvre is he typically stumbles upon really good ideas for movies, and then so thoroughly botches the execution that you're ashamed to still be sitting in the theater after two and a half hours. Take Blood Diamond, for instance..."

Updates, 12/7: Online listening tip. "Alex Yearsley from Global Witness and Amy O'Meara from Amnesty International USA's Business and Human Rights Program examine some of the most pressing issues surrounding the international diamond trade" on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly: "There's no use griping about the superfluous white-on-white romance that generates so much dead space in Zwick's movie, for without it Blood Diamond would never have been made. Which would be a pity, for as liberal hand-wringing goes, it's a winner."

Eric Kohn in the New York Press: "Zwick choreographs solid, thrilling sequences that pave the way for one fast-paced gimmick to segue into its reflection with ease."

A "thundering, unflinchingly brutal, eagle-eyed ordeal to be respected," writes Michael Atkinson in the Philadelphia City Paper. "DiCaprio finally does what movie stars are supposed to do: enable us to swallow, in two hours, a grand river of drama and history and do it by the sheer convincing force of his presence."

Update, 12/8: "If films were judged solely by their good intentions, this one would be best in show," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Instead, gilded in money and dripping with sanctimony, confused and mindlessly contradictory, the film is a textbook example of how easily commercialism can trump do-goodism, particularly in Hollywood."

Also, Zwick discusses the movie and one of its scenes and Jeanette Catsoulis reviews The Empire in Africa, "a noble but failed attempt to explicate the tragedy of the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone."

For Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, this movie is "a public-service announcement masquerading as an adventure story, a picture made with a great deal of enthusiasm and conviction - just not enough to make it any good."

Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times: "It can be pulled apart or appreciated, depending on your mood, but it should be recognized that movies like this have become as rare and potentially valuable as the stone that sets its plot in motion."

Also: "Diamond sales have never been better." Valli Herman reports that, all across the board, from Sam's Club to movie premieres, there's no sign of concern, much less a boycott.

And Sam Adams on The Empire in Africa: "Diaz is so determined to present the RUF as an African liberation movement struggling against the remnants of colonial oppression that he accepts their version of events even when it strains credulity, and dismisses as 'propaganda' all claims to the contrary."

Vadim Rizov at the Reeler: "When a movie's most enjoyable sequence is the extermination of an entire camp of workers, something's gone wrong. And what is that message anyway? 'It is up to the consumer to ensure that a diamond is conflict-free,' the end credits declare - not exactly a burning observation to most average-income viewers." Seriously. Are diamonds much of an issue in your household, dear Reader?

Updates, 12/9: Sheerly Avni at Truthdig: "The movie doesn't know if it wants to be a morality play, political lecture, adrenaline fix, love story, interracial buddy picture or corporate takedown, so it tries for all of the above. Blood Diamond is a schizophrenic mess. It's also, thanks in no small part to the performances of its two male leads, one of the most powerful movies you will see this year."

Slate's Dana Stevens: "Unfortunately, one of Blood Diamond's multiple problems is that it feels too much like a vehicle for DiCaprio."

"[B]rain-fryingly boring," declares the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle. "Zwick tried to make a great movie, but somewhere in the process he forgot to make a good one."

Paul Cullum profiles Djimon Hounsou for the LAT.

Update, 12/10: "There's something disturbingly formulaic about the ferociously well-staged outbursts of violence, which arrive with a metronomic regularity that can seem more opportunistic than organic," writes Newsweek's David Ansen. "But there is much to admire here."

Posted by dwhudson at December 3, 2006 2:23 PM