Of Brawny Mercenaries and Blushing Brides By Prospero Pulma Jr.

Of Brawny Mercenaries and Blushing Brides

Can you imagine Cinderella marrying Rambo? Unless it’s a lowbrow romantic/soft porn flick showcasing the chiseled bodies of soldiers of fortune carrying comely lasses like war booty, blushing brides - or even naïve babes like Cinderella, Snow White, etc.- and mercenaries are unlikely to mingle in the silver screen, much less date. Alright, Shrek is a different story!

But in Blood Diamond, their worlds are somehow intertwined, with one doing all the huffing and puffing (It’s not what you think, you porn-afflicted twerp!) in the field while the other blushes and gasps when a man, hypnotized by ethanol and a full moon and properly equipped with a diamond ring (the best engagement props of all time), pops the question: Will you marry me? You see, Edward Zwick somewhat manages to take all brides, at least the affluent ones, on a two-hour guilt trip with his film that depicts Leonardo DiCaprio breaking out of his pretty boy image by playing a rough mercenary, born in Sierra Leone and hardened in Africa’s battlefields, named Danny Archer. Of course, Zwick cannot make a decent movie with the camera perpetually fixed on DiCaprio’s face, so Djimon Hounsou is cast as Solomon Vandy, a fisherman and the finder of a pink diamond worth millions of dollars, and Jennifer Connelly is also taken aboard as Maddy Bowen, a newshound sniffing for leads about the illicit trade of conflict diamonds.

Blood Diamond makes its viewers believe that they are watching a General Patronage film from Walt Disney with its very serene opening scenes. Solomon Vandy, who has grand dreams for his son, Dia (Kagiyo Kuypers), rouses him from sleep before the sun has even peeked out of the horizon because the poor boy has to walk several odd kilometers to reach his school. And then hell opens and the movie immediately reclaims its R-18 rating for excessive violence when rebels swoop down on their village. His family narrowly escapes the bloodbath, but Solomon is enslaved to work in the diamond fields, where he unearths the fabled diamond.

Captain Poison (David Harewood), the rebel honcho who manages the mine, learns of Solomon’s discovery and wants the gem for himself. Naturally, the hero stands his ground and is saved by a raid by government troops. But Captain Poison makes it through the skirmish with minor injuries, and decides to get the diamond from Solomon through Dia. Little by little, the boy is poisoned with the power and authority that guns project and cool rap music. Solomon, desperate to rebuild his shattered life and family, caves in to Danny’s offer of aid if he will turn in the diamond to the mercenary who moonlights as a diamond smuggler for his boss, Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo). It turns out that all the adult males, except for Solomon, view the diamond as their ticket out of Africa, so they scramble madly for its possession, leaving the poor fisherman as the only sane man in the cast. This is where Maddy, in exchange for an exclusive scoop on how diamonds from Africa’s conflict zones somehow end up as legitimate stuff (call it “diamond laundering”), waves her press privileges like a magic wand that opens door for Danny and Solomon in their mission to recover the diamond. Then she hangs back when the men dig down to fight, resurfacing only when Danny implores her to make a final run for him: Smuggle Solomon to London and expose the illegal trade of blood diamonds.

The film, especially with its subplot on child soldiers, is largely disturbing, and might cause a lady to wonder if the glittering jewel on her finger is not literally stained with blood. DiCaprio as Danny Archer is intense, but he is eclipsed by Djimon Hounsou. As Solomon, he swings from an African obeisant to a white man to someone who trades punches with Danny. He transforms from a docile man to someone consumed by hatred for the person who wrecked his life, Captain Poison. Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen is like the diamond in the title, an ornament; too bad that her mutual attraction with Danny was not sealed with a diamond ring. Otherwise, Blood Diamond would have become a very rare movie about rugged mercenaries and lovely brides.

-Prospero Pulma Jr.