Blood Diamond (2006)

After watching this film, I still firmly believe that Leonardo DiCaprio is the best actor of this generation (and quite possibly the best actor of all time). He is often critiqued as playing the same role in all of his films, and while I understand that many of his roles are similar, this role differs immensely from any other I’ve seen him in before. With this role came the challenge of a South African accent; DiCaprio flawlessly executed this accent (something incredibly odd that I realized was the fact that Taika Waititi’s Korg from “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017) sounds a lot like DiCaprio’s Danny Archer in this film). Along with the exceptional performance of DiCaprio, Dijimon Hounsou’s performance rivaled DiCaprio’s. Hounsou’s character, Solomon Vandy, runs the gamut of emotions throughout the course of the film. From true happiness to complete despair, Hounsou displayed each and every emotion perfectly. I thought the story was fantastic. The film was full of emotion and excitement, keeping me engaged for most of it. I found some parts of the film to move almost sluggishly. While I found the former to be true, I did also understand that the scenes that moved slowly were essential to the plot and the overall outcome of the story, making the struggle of getting through certain scenes worth while. My only true complaint with the film was the use of the cameras. I found that many of the scenes contained extreme closeups of the characters. Only being able to see Jennifer Connolly or Djimon Hounsou from eyebrows to chin was frustrating as I felt that we weren’t properly exposed to the emotion being presented to the audience—considering how emotional this film’s story is, it seems that the cinematography actually took away from some of the emotion. Overall, however, I was impressed with this film. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0450259/