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Blood Diamond attempts not only to tell a number of stories but also to make a number of statements. The condemnation of the diamond industry for its complicity in smuggling and arms trading is obvious and expected; the film widens its target to include the exploitation of numerous African countries by pointing out that whenever something valuable is found, conditions get worse for the region. ("We better pray they never find oil here," says one old man as his village burns down around him. "Then we'll have real problems.") The West is under fire not only for its specific cases of corruption, but also for its general state of indifference. "This is what a million people looks like," says Maddy, as they approach a refugee camp teeming with humanity. "You might see 30 seconds of this on CNN, between the sports and the weather."

But the film does more than point fingers. It casts around for answers to the Big Questions—what makes people good, or bad, and if or how God is involved in the woes of the world. "I think people are just people," Danny shrugs, even while we watch the story carry his self-interested character to a discovery of some inner goodness. Later he confesses, "I used to wonder if God could ever forgive us for what we do to each other. But then I realized God left this place a long time ago." While Blood Diamond does not (and cannot) offer the definitive answers to these questions, it asks them in some compelling and legitimate ways.

Danny and Solomon are literally dodging bullets in war-torn Sierra Leone

What really makes Blood Diamond shine is the acting of its principles. Hounsou is a riveting presence; when he is overcome with longing for his son, his grief and desire are palpable. Connelly's Maddy is believable and magnetic. But this is ultimately DiCaprio's movie, and he makes his conflicted Danny a near iconic anti-hero. Naysayers doubted DiCaprio could handle the physicality of the role or the Afrikaans accent, but he inhabits the character beautifully and seemingly effortlessly. When the complexity of Blood Diamond's story and the breadth of its scope threaten to collapse the film, it is the force of the acting that keeps the viewer caught up in the momentum.

Blood Diamond is an ambitious movie that aspires to combine mainstream, swash-buckling Hollywood entertainment with insightful psychodrama and serious social statement. Some viewers will wonder whether heavy problems like genocide, Western exploitation and the tragedy of child soldiers should be explored in a film that also uses carnage and conflict as a source of entertainment. Blood Diamond is so relentlessly violent that it runs the risk of desensitizing its audience to the very atrocities it aims to decry. At the beginning of the film I flinched at every act of brutality, but by its end I had seen so much death depicted that the images no longer had the same impact.

Still, I left the film thinking about—and caring about—a country I had never seriously thought about before. And though it may be Blood Diamond's glossy, stunt-doubled violence that will put people into seats, the story it tells of some very real atrocities just might move some hearts.

1. Solomon is a man of great integrity who hates to lie, but he will do anything to get back his son. Under what circumstances (if ever) is lying OK? How about stealing? Killing
2. How should the Western world respond when it becomes aware of atrocities committed against civilians during civil wars? Should outside governments become involved

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