Journal 5: Blood Diamond Review from Tristen Stover.

The film Blood Diamond took place in Sierra Leone in 1999 during the African Civil War. The film stared Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role of Danny Archer who soon becomes character Solomon Vendees (Dijmon Housou) partner and good friend, along with also a female character Maddie Brown (Jennifer Connelly) who is a reporter. In 1999, in Sierra Leone, the fisherman Solomon Vandees dreams about the day that his young son Dia will become a doctor. His dreams are shattered when the rebels invade his village and kidnap him to make him work in the diamond mines. Solomon finds a huge diamond and while hiding it, the commandant of the rebels see's, but the rebels are attacked and Salomon is arrested by the government army. While in jail, the wounded commandant tells the prisoners that Salomon found the stone, and the smuggler Danny Archer from Zimbabwe releases Salomon and proposes to exchange the diamond by his missing family. Using the idealistic American journalist Maddy Bowen, Danny locates the wife and daughters of Salomon in a refugee camp, but is informed that his son had been recruited by the rebels. Salomon and Danny create and make a partnership, with Salomon looking for and finding his son, and Danny looking for the diamond and finding redemption. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who is wondering about how Africa is and what it is like because this movie can very easily put an image in your head that you won't ever forget. It also gives you an idea about what the little boys went through mentally and physically. The film definitely shows you the sacrifices that are made in Sierra Leone to find the diamonds. It shows us how the costs of the diamonds are worth way more than what we actually pay for them. Not to mention, the diamonds cost human suffrage while trying to find the actual diamonds.

After reading some reviews off of MRQE.com over Blood Diamond  I learned from reading other peoples reviews that they have a different interpretation about the movie than I had but, the reviews can still be very helpful to me because it gives me a different point of view to think about the movie in. "Africa’s enduring sorrow is ripe for drama, but “Blood Diamond” is, finally, a fitting metaphor for the gems: Potentially brilliant from a distance, but upon closer inspection, one likely will see the flaws." This quote came from a review off of Variety.com by Brian Lowry. In my opinion, I do not like how they use Africa for example and state that there sorrow is ripe for drama, because at the same time people are on there own suffering, trying to stay alive.


Here is Salomon holding his son Dia.