Serviceable action-adventure despite frequent interruptions for sermonettes on human rights and capitalist wrongs. The ripped-from-the-headlines story (yesterday's headlines: civil war in Sierra Leone, 1999) features the stock figures of a self-interested soldier of fortune, in league with slaughterous rebels and unscrupulous jewellers, an engagé foreign correspondent, and a hapless native peasant enslaved in the diamond mines and separated from his family, all united on a treasure hunt for a priceless buried gem, "a pink," big as a walnut. Without the politics, the strong-arm manipulation of emotions would be inexcusable. Or rather, more clearly inexcusable. It's still inexcusable even now. (The on-screen standing ovation at the final curtain is an unsubtle elbow-in-the-ribs to the moviegoer.) Behind the op-ed posturing, the film roughly resembles a middle-period, middle-drawer Robert Mitchum vehicle, except that Leonardo DiCaprio, affecting an acceptable Afrikaner accent, is no Robert Mitchum. For all his recently acquired bulk, including the heftiness of his credits in Martin Scorsese's oeuvre, he remains too boyish to be a persuasive action hero: Robby Bensonitis, let's call it. Jennifer Connelly, meantime, is both capable and decorative as the journalist. And the only thing keeping Djimon Hounsou from total sympathy is the sanctimony in which his director, Edward Zwick, enwraps him. All three, along with their Dark Continent environs, are nicely, cleanly, warmly photographed by Eduardo Serra. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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