Rock and a hard place

Jan 25 2007 Cinema

Mike Davies reviews the week's new cinema releases

• BLOOD DIAMOND * * * *
  Cert 15, 143 mins

Having doubly lucked out at the Golden Globes and the chances of a Bafta win for The Departed looking slim, Leonardo DiCaprio will be pinning any award hopes on the Oscar nomination.
Whether his performance as Danny Archer, a cynically self-serving Rhodesian-born mercenary turned African diamond smuggler who finds moral redemption warrants the statue is another matter.

He certainly gives good South African accent and pulls out several dramatic stops, but while his boyish looks (even behind a wispy beard) bolster the charm he uses to twist others to his own treacherous ends, they don't readily help convince you that he's the emotionally shut down veteran of childhood trauma and the bloody Congo conflict.

DiCaprio's a fine actor, but with a character arc that so readily calls to mind the sort of hardened anti-hero played by Bogart, his limitations here – not necessarily of his own making – are all the more apparent.

There is though a real Oscar-worthy performance from Djimon Hounsou who again effortlessly surmounts the noble African clichés of typecasting to deliver wrenching internalised conflict and desperate driven passion.

He's Solomon Vandy, a Sierre Leone fisherman who, when brutal guerrilla rebels from the Revolutionary United Front butcher his village, is separated from his wife and children and carried off as slave labour mining for the diamonds that, smuggled out to the West where they're 'washed' with legally acquired gems by corporations prepared to turn a blind eye to the source, provide the money to fund the war.

>> Leonardo
di Caprio
interview

Having buried a rare large pink stone moments before a government raid on the rebel camp, Vandy now becomes Archer's ticket out of Africa and a pressing debt following capture during a smuggling trip. Promising to help locate Vandy's missing family in return for leading him to the diamond, and bartering a deal with American photojournalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), offering insider information on the illegal trade in return for help, Archer finds himself up against two other parties equally determined to acquire the rock.

One is former mentor Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo) whose forces have been enlisted to take out the RUF, the other, driven by much the same desire as Archer, is cold-blooded guerrilla fighter Captain Poison (David Harewood).

Matters are complicated by the fact that the latter is the man who both abducted Solomon and is now turning his kidnapped young son Dia into a soulless boy soldier.

With such a rich seam of agendas and antagonisms, there's plenty of scope for explosive action and emotional drama, both of which director Edward Zwick supplies in epic widescreen form.

On top of which, as with past outings Glory and The Last Samurai, he also layers political and social liberal comment, both the unfolding plot and several bolted on speeches drawing attention to the continuing trade in the so called 'conflict diamonds' that both encourages and supports wars in Africa.

Not a message that has gone down too well with the diamond industry.

Although guilty of manipulative sentimentality and with the father-son subplot a touch contrived, Zwick's gritty approach does keep a restrained leash on the romantic angle (The African Queen anyone?) and eschews the potential for preaching about Third World exploitation, generally opting to let audiences draw their own parallels and conclusions.

With a third act stumble and clumsy coda back in London as corporate complicity gets stitched up, it's not as good as it thinks it is, but it's still a gripping, intelligently entertaining flawed gem.

• VENUS  * * *
  Cert15,  94 mins

Remember The Mother, where widowed 68-year-old Anne Reid struck up a sexual affair with handyman Daniel Craig? Well, director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi have now reunited for what might well be titled The Father.

Except, of course, to avoid any accusations of dirty old man fantasies, there's not actually any sex. Mind you, the erotic tension is positively priapic, especially a scene involving a bath and some neck stroking.

>> Peter
O'Toole
interview

His best role in years, the distaff Reid substitute here is Peter O'Toole, deservedly picking up Bafta and Oscar nominations for his twinklingly roguish but also poignantly affecting turn as Maurice Russell, a semi-retired never quite made it actor who spends his time with grumpy fellow aged thesp Ian (Bafta nominee Leslie Phillips), engaged in a daily routine of tipples and talk of mortality at each other's London flats.

Then along comes Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), Ian's grandniece from up North looking to become a model. He's hoping she'll look after him, she has no intention of doing anything like.

She's a mouthy, sullen, uncultured, abrasive sort with a fondness for Bacardi Breezers and Pot Noodles, but Maurice is quite taken with her vivacity. Offering to show her round