In the wake of movies like “The Departed,” “Dreamgirls” and “The Pursuit of Happyness,” who are all working the hype machine, “Blood Diamond” gets overlooked.

   Djimon Hounsou gives a breath taking performance as Solomon, a fisherman who gets separated from his family after rebels attack his village and force him to work in a diamond field.

   While working the field, Solomon discovers a huge diamond and decides to keep it for himself as a tool to locate his family, knowing all the while that if discovered, he will be killed on the spot.

   Leonardo DiCaprio plays Danny Archer, a mercenary from Zimbabwe in search of a priceless diamond. While in prison for smuggling diamonds, he overhears that Solomon has hidden an enormous jewel; Archer promises Solomon that in exchange for the diamond he would find his family. 

   Each character has an extraordinary amount of depth. Every ounce of pain that Solomon feels, you feel it; you grieve with him. Despite the fact that Archer does some really despicable things, you still find yourself empathizing with him. It’s hard to determine whether the praise lies within superb acting or phenomenal writing.

   “Blood Diamond” isn’t a movie contrived out of the mind of a fictional writer, this is reality. A reality you nor myself will ever have to know. We turn a blind eye and focus our attention on our own self-serving greed, while villages of innocent people are slain, all in the name of a measly diamond.

   The action scenes, and there are many, are sometimes difficult to watch. A strong stomach is needed to watch the merciless killings and the severing of limbs from both adults and children. While I watched these horrific scenes I found myself asking: "Why wasn’t this the lead story on every news circuit?! Why were we more concerned about the personal indiscretion of President Clinton, instead of the Civil War taking place in Sierra Leone?"  

    “Blood Diamond” doesn’t exploit the Civil War, and it doesn’t come across as being preachy. It just tells the world what really happened in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s.

   We like to believe that diamonds are a girl’s best friend; I think it's time we found ourselves a new friend!