BEFORE: OK, I got to July 4 as I planned, I only had to fudge things by one day. The next marker will come at Movie #3,600, and it will come in the middle of 6-film McConaughey chain, so I can place whichever film I want on the milestone, like an explorer on a mountaintop. That will be my 2/3 completion marker for the year, in just a few days, and then I chart my course for the Summer Music Concerts (& Docs) Series. Still waiting to find out if movie theaters in NYC are going to open up this summer, it's kind of important to my chain. We're entering Phase 3 of re-opening today, but that only applies to gyms, nail salons and tattoo parlors, and I frequent none of those places. What I need to know about, restaurants and movie theaters, is apparently all in Phase 4.
Djimon Hounsou carries over from "In America". I've know I've passed on this film before, I added it to my list when it was on Netflix or Hulu, and then of course I took too long and it was no longer available. But I kept it on the list anyway, figuring I'd rent it on iTunes for $3.99 if I could link to it. Well, that day finally came, but before watching it on iTunes I checked on cable, where it's currently available on the On Demand channel, also for $3.99 - but if I tape it off cable I can burn it to a DVD and keep a copy, that's a better deal for me than watching it once and having my access to it disappear 30 days later. And now I can also rent "Uncut Gems" the same way (previously watched on an Academy screener) and make a double-feature out of it on a disc.
THE PLOT: A fisherman, a smuggler and a syndicate of businessmen match wits over the possession of a priceless diamond.
AFTER: There's a fair amount of action in this film, and that's a good thing - any time you put DiCaprio in an action film, it's a good move, like with "The Revenant" or "The Departed" or "Django Unchained", and let's not forget that half of "Titanic" was an action film, of sorts, anyway. But it also feels a bit like this film didn't know what it wanted to be, or rather, which social issue it wanted us to focus on. Obviously there was the call to action for people buying diamonds to be responsible and find out what country they came from, and whether there's currently a war going on there (some people say "conflict diamonds" instead of "blood diamonds", because perhaps if people see that their diamond isn't colored red like blood, then they're in the clear). But then there's the struggles of the Sierra Leone Civil War, the way that wars are waged in Africa, turning young boys into rebel armies and killing most older men, though in this case they saved a few to work harvesting diamonds, which may have happened in real life, but here that just seems like a convenient way to tie all the social problems together. Then there's the way that the (fictional) Van de Kaap company hoards those diamonds, squirreling most of them away in their vaults in order to drive up the prices. (And here I thought that company only made frozen fish sticks...). So let me get this straight, you want me to be outraged that diamonds are being harvested, but then also outraged that those diamonds aren't making it to market? That all feels contradictory, can you please make up your mind about which thing I'm supposed to be the most mad about?
The problems start when Solomon Vandy is separated from his family and made to harvest diamonds to fund the rebels. The rebel leader is violently opposed to slavery and oppression by the white man, but, and you may find this somewhat ironic, has no problem enslaving and oppressing African men himself if that aids his revolution. This might even seem funny if it weren't so tragic. What other zany contradictions can we find in the realm of global politics? Things get worse when Solomon finds the biggest diamond anyone has seen, and it's a pink one, and it's cloudy, and apparently those things are supposed to be really good. But he doesn't turn it over to his rebel captors, instead he buries next to a fallen tree trunk, and plans to come back later to get it. God knows there can't be many fallen tree trunks in Africa, right? Way to go.
Thanks to coincidence, the opposition forces attack the rebel camp JUST as Solomon is caught burying the diamond, and the rebel leader demands it. And another wacky coincidence places them both in jail at the same time, so disreputable diamond smuggler Danny Archer (who'd just been caught for smuggling diamonds, so I guess nearly everyone in this film is terrible at what they do...) overhears the rebel leader accusing Solomon of stealing a huge diamond - so after Archer gets bailed out of jail, he bails out Solomon so they can buddy up and.... damn, I want to say they go back and get the diamond, but that's just not what happens, not for a long while, anyway.
Instead they travel ALL the way down to Cape Town, South Africa, so they can meet with Danny's boss, Colonel Coetzee, a former member of the South African Defence Force, who now runs a private military company. And surprise, he also wants the diamond. (Umm, let's make this easy, everyone in this film wants that diamond.). Archer also takes time to flirt with a woman who turns out to be a journalist (there's been a lot of that around here lately, from "State of Play" to "The Last Thing He Wanted"...) who's also conveniently looking for a story she can break. A loose partnership is formed between the smuggler who wants the diamond, the man who knows where it is, and the woman who wants to write about it and expose those diamond dealers for the corrupt, money-loving businessmen that we all know they are.
So it's BACK up to Sierra Leone, where they all pretend to be journalists (umm, except for the woman who really is one...) and they find Solomon's wife and daughters living in a refugee camp. His son, however, has been indoctrinated into the rebel army, and this part of the film greatly resembles what I saw earlier this year in "Beasts of No Nation", only this film came first, so if one film was copying the other, it's the other way around. Archer gives the journalist everything, all the names, dates, places that he knows so she can expose them, while he and Solomon sneak off to find the diamond. Solomon just can't resist looking for his son among the young rebel soldiers, and this endangers the whole mission - hey, remember the diamond? The one that everyone wants?
The rebel army shows up, the private military army shows up, and it's a free-for-all as everybody shoots at everybody. What's the opposite of a Mexican stand-off? I guess it's an African shoot-out. Whether you agree in the end with who gets the diamond and how they get it might say a lot about you, I suppose. Perhaps you'll find the ending fulfilling and satisfying, or perhaps not. But we're told at the end that 40 countries eventually signed an agreement to restrict the sale of "conflict diamonds". However, it's still up to the buyers to determine if their diamonds are responsibly sourced. Great, more work for me to do - I promise to get right on this as soon as I prove there's no dolphin in my tuna, and no coronavirus in my packaged meats.
Still, I'm glad I was finally able to cross this one off the list, because (like "Proof of Life" and countless others) it just sort of proves that there's a rhythm to my movie-watching process, which at times resembles a purpose. This movie was available to me, but I wasn't ready for it. Then I was ready for it, but it was no longer available. Eventually things worked out, I was ready for the movie and it was available, so if I'm frequently open to letting the universe decide when it's a good time to watch each movie, as this could be a sign that things have a funny way of working themselves out. I just have to be patient, and then take advantage of the opportunities as I become aware of them.
Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Jennifer Connelly (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Kagiso Kuypers, Arnold Vosloo (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Antony Coleman, Benu Mabhena, Anointing Lukola, David Harewood (last seen in "MI-5"), Basil Wallace, Jimi Mistry (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Michael Sheen (last seen in "Home Again"), Marius Weyers (last seen in "Gandhi"), Stephen Collins (last seen in "The Big Picture"), Ntare Mwine, Ato Essandoh (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Percy Matsemela, Gaurav Chopra, Clare Holman, with archive footage of Bill Clinton (last seen in "Richard Jewell")
RATING: 6 out of 10 border guards
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