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.

When Saving Private Ryan Meets Hotel Rwanda

When I watched Bruce Willis’ action flick, Tears of the Sun, two movies came into my mind: Saving Private Ryan and Hotel Rwanda. Although Tears of the Sun used the same hackneyed storyline of men called to risk their lives to save others as the other two critically acclaimed films, it stood like a B-movie adaptation and looked more like a cut‑and-paste filmmaking feat. From Saving Private Ryan, the script threw in a squad of soldiers who are brave but reluctant to play hero when their mission does not call for it. And from Hotel Rwanda, the film borrowed the element of massive bloodletting, i.e., genocide that seems to be endemic in Africa.

When ethnic animosities flared up in Nigeria and bodies began piling up in the streets, Lt. A.K. Waters (Willis) and his eight-man SEAL team is sent to the bushes to extract Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) and other Americans from a missionary outpost/hospital before their pretty heads are chopped off by marauding soldiers. Their mission seemed to be so humdrum that the commandos were counting to be back to catch a football game, until the lovely doctor refused to come along unless the team takes 70 refugees in the mission with them. Waters grants Kendricks’ wish, but he forces her aboard the rescue helicopter, leaving the ragtag band of Africans to the mercy of their enemies. The team is consumed by guilt when they saw the razed buildings of the mission and the butchered bodies of its occupants. They turn around to lead the refugees out of Nigeria on foot. Pursued by a larger force, Waters and his team are forced to make a stand when they discover that Kendricks’ has hidden the sole survivor of Nigeria’s first family and the last link in a long line of tribal leader in the entourage. Of course, Waters’ decision peeved his boss who is used to seeing him turn a blind eye to carnage if it does not concern his mission. The showdown, as expected, is riddled with action when the SEALS clash with a numerically superior enemy and half of their team will fall in the field. The situation turns desperate until the cavalry arrives and blasts the enemy with cluster bombs. Waters and the surviving, but barely breathing, SEALS are airlifted together with the lovely doctor, leaving the Africans in the safety of a refugee camp.

The film is dragging in the middle, and as an intermission number and to remind the viewer that Waters and his men are killing machines, they get to annihilate a platoon‑sized unit which was too busy sacking a large village that the soldiers did not notice the SEALS until their throats have been slit or they have been shot. And as a bonus, viewers are given a glimpse of some of the Navy SEALS’ tactics, like the peel left and bounding.

Some of the scenes which overemphasized the SEALS heroism should have been cut because there was absolutely no need for them. Waters and his men are heroes, period. Action buffs who expect a lot of action should stay from this film. They should settle for Willis’ Die Hard films because they are loaded with more gunfights than Tears of the Sun. At least, Willis did not play John McClane or Rambo in this film, which is its only saving grace.

-Prospero Pulma Jr.-