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A flawed gem
Nils van der Linden
Posted Thu, 18 Jan 2007
Jislaaik. That Leonardo DiCaprio oke are a moerse good actor but even he can't gooi a really lekker Souf Effriken accent, bru.
He's not alone. Juliette Binoche and Brendan Gleeson inadvertently gave 'In My Country' a comic twist with their hatchet job dialects; Val Kilmer sounded more like a Jamaican Eskimo when he tried to pass for a South African in 'The Saint'; and the Broederbond villains in 'Lethal Weapon 2' were as laughable as Mel Gibson's mullet.
Yet, while DiCaprio does a far better job than any Hollywood star before him, his pronunciation meanders between Apartheid-era cop, Durban surfer and Cape Town stoner — often within the same sentence. And an endless stream of howzit's and bru's does little to hide the traces of Australian and the Queen's English, while keeping the sniggers coming amongst locals.
It's unfortunate that the brave move of tackling a seemingly impossible accent will, for South African audiences, undermine what's another crackerjack performance from the on-form actor. Following his intense, career-defining turn in 'The Departed', DiCaprio builds up a rough-around-the-edges take-no-shit exterior to hide the insecurities and self-doubt of jaded ex-mercenary Danny Archer.
Based in Sierra Leone, the proudly Rhodesian (not Zimbabwean) diamond smuggler has convinced himself that Africa is just a place where people take advantage of each other — an endless cycle of corruption and violence. But it’s a cynical worldview he has to reconsider after forcing his way into the lives of Solomon Vandy (a local fisherman) and Maddy Bowen (an idealistic American journalist).
Vandy, played with a combination of wide-eyed innocence, desperation and ultimately resolve by Djimon Hounsou, is kidnapped by a group of rebels doing their part to intensify the country’s late-‘90s civil war. Forced to look for diamonds — which the guerrillas use to fund their terror campaigns — he discovers a rare pink stone and buries it, hoping to retrieve the valuable gem later.
Fate — in the form of more violence — intervenes, throwing the simple fisherman into the clutches of the predatory Archer, who’s prepared to do anything to get his hands on the precious diamond. That includes begrudgingly helping Solomon find his refugee wife and daughter, as well as the son who’s become a child soldier.
The diamond smuggler needs help from Bowen (a glamorous but feisty Jennifer Connolly, who is criminally underused), who in turn wants the inside story on “blood diamonds” — stones smuggled out of countries at war and used to pay for more weapons.
And so the stage is set for each of our three heroes (or anti-hero in the case of Archer) to reassess their view of the world — and, more importantly, get thrown into the midst of several breakneck action scenes. Shot with as much intensity and flair as you’d expect from a ‘Bourne’ movie, these thrilling sequences hint at the pulsating action adventure that Edward Zwick could have created.
But ‘Blood Diamond’ is a bit like DiCaprio’s accent — all over the place. The director can’t decide whether he’s making ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘Hotel Rwanda’. And although serious drama and broad entertainment can co-exist, the politically charged segments seem to have been added as an afterthought. As disturbing and harrowing as the scenes of child soldier training and genocide may be, they ultimately get in the way of our heroes’ disparate quests.
With a little more focus — and a less schizophrenic screenplay — it could have been on a par with that intelligent and articulate (but thoroughly entertaining) masterpiece, ‘The Constant Gardener’.
As it stands, ‘Blood Diamond’ is flawed. But with much more to offer than your standard Hollywood blockbuster — fine performances, in your face realism, something to think about — you can even get past the not so lekker local lingo, bru.
