There's a fine line between exposé and exploitation, and it's one Blood Diamond tries with varying success to balance. The subject, the international market for conflict diamonds (diamonds used by an insurgent or invading force to fund their efforts), is an important one, and there must be a certain tradeoff to make a serious subject appeal to the greatest audience. Hence, we have a thriller, set against the backdrop of a civil war in Sierra Leone, that makes a valiant attempt to bring attention to the issue (which still is a problem in Africa) but falters in placing it in predictable, formulaic action piece. With this comes moments of, at the worst, questionable motivation or, at the least, questionable execution, but either way, there's something disquieting about watching innocent men, women, and children indiscriminately gunned down when the focus of the sequence is, at its core, a simple chase. The movie has many assets, though. It is not blind to political reality. It features a central figure who is the definition of an antihero. It is directed with skilled visceral polish by Edward Zwick. And despite problematic moments that do underplay the importance of the subject matter, the movie's heart seems to be in the right place.

In Sierra Leone in 1999, a civil war is underway between the government and the Revolutionary United Front. A fisherman named Solomon (Djimon Hounsou) awakens his son Dia (Caruso Kuypers) to take him to school. Meanwhile, Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) has arrived by plane to Sierra Leone to receive a payment in diamonds for a load of weapons soon to arrive. Solomon and Dia are on their way home from work and school respectively when they encounter the RUF on the road. Solomon returns to his village to find the RUF randomly killing his neighbors but manages to send his family away before he is captured by the fighters. Archer, in the meantime, is arrested trying to smuggle the diamonds across the border into Liberia, where these conflict stones are laundered into the system of legitimate diamonds. Solomon is forced to mine diamonds out of the water and happens upon a doozy of a rock and buries it before being arrested by government forces for alleged connections to the RUF. In prison, Archer overhears an RUF member speaking of Solomon's diamond. He gets Solomon out of jail, and soon the two are making their way to find the stone.

Fairly simple, but there's a lot else going on. Solomon's son is picked up by the RUF and becomes a child soldier in the uprising. Archer encounters an American journalist named Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), who wants information regarding the trafficking of diamonds into Liberia and their connection to a major diamond mogul.