Movies

"Blood Diamond"

_ Director Edward Zwick ("Glory," "The Last Samurai") takes an unflinching look at the brutality of the African diamond trade in this powerfully acted, vividly shot drama. Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly star as three disparate figures who start out using each other and end up wanting to help each other. DiCaprio plays a smuggler and former soldier constantly on the hunt for the biggest stone out there.

Hounsou has found one and hidden it, having been stripped from his family and forced to work in the Sierra Leone diamond fields. And Connelly plays an American journalist investigating the widespread violence and corruption that pervade the diamond industry. "Blood Diamond" runs too long and the script from Charles Leavitt ("K-PAX") tends to get a bit preachy and didactic. But the intensity of this film is just spellbinding, with surprises around every corner _ some of them horrifying. The methodology of taking young boys from their homes, putting automatic rifles in their tiny hands and turning them into remorseless killers is especially chilling. Three stars out of four.

_ Christy Lemire, AP