Blood Diamond

Edward Zwick seems to have a strong affinity for ethnically-charged war films and thrillers. As is pretty apparent from the title, this movie is about African conflict diamonds, specifically ones coming from Sierra Leone during a brutal civil war in the 90s. Blood diamonds aren't as widespread as they were a few years ago, but they're still in circulation, and as long as people are making violent action dramas anyway, it's nice that sometimes they can actually be about something. I haven't always been Zwick's biggest fan, but he did a nice job with this film, one which is further elevated by strong central performances.

Despite 2006 being the year The Departed came out, Leonardo DiCaprio got his Oscar nomination that year for this movie, playing Danny Archer, a native slugger who gets caught up in the war while trying to help a fisherman named Solomon Vandy get his family back in return for a gigantic diamond he found and buried. DiCaprio is pretty great in this movie, intense and not entirely noble, but still a relatively good man at heart. He puts on a strong South African-or-thereabouts accent, and while I can't really say exactly how accurate it is, it sounds convincing and the general response from actual Africans is pretty positive. Solomon is played by Djimon Hounsou, whose name isn't as big as it is hard to pronounce, and he's also pretty great, getting award consideration himself. Jennifer Connelly is also good as an American journalist who wants the real blood diamond story and helps Danny in return for information, of course getting close to him in the process.

A lot of the plot and general action aren't particularly exceptional or original, but the casting and often brutal situations make it a more compelling movie than it could have been. The real African issues like the diamonds, corrupt governments, and child soldiers also make the whole thing seem more important and authentic, and add weight to the drama behind the shoot outs and explosions. It could be considered exploitative to use these topics to sell what might otherwise be a normal thriller, but I'd say it's better for more people to know about these things than to make sure the source of the information is 100% pure. And besides, it's a pretty darn good thriller.

Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time is Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's final film, and one of his only works that isn't a western. It is beautiful, violent, poignant, and disturbing all at once, and it would be an easy contender for best crime epic of all time if it weren't for those pesky Godfather movies. It tells the story of a Jewish gang of bootleggers in Prohibition-era New York, focusing on Robert De Niro's character of Noodles, and James Woods' Max to a lesser extent. It starts in the middle of Noodles' life, with his friends getting killed and him barely escaping himself. It then jumps to him as a much older man, revisiting his old haunts after something has called him back, which serves as a way to frame the events that came before. It cuts back to the gang as a group of kids, including a very young Jennifer Connelly as the kid version of a dancer he falls in love with, and then shows the events that eventually lead to the film's beginning.

I make specific mention of the interesting structure of the story's timeline because of how thoroughly it was butchered in the original American release of the movie. The film in its intended form is almost excessively long at about three hours and forty minutes, but it uses all of that time for a reason. I can understand why a studio would want to cut down a movie's length for commercial considerations, and a few minutes here or there is usually acceptable. But they basically cut this movie in half, including a lot of the childhood scenes which are vital to setting up the character relationships that would carry the entire emotional weight of the story, and on top of that reedited the whole thing into chronological order, removing something that was important to the way the whole thing was told. At that point you're not even watching the same film anymore. I haven't actually seen this cut so I can't really comment on it, but all accounts are it takes a good piece of work and destroys it, and Leone was so hurt by what they did that he never made another movie before he died. It's really a shame, because America is probably his masterpiece and the original release prevented it from ever really taking off, preventing it from being put in the annals along with The Godfather and Goodfellas and turning it into something film buffs whisper about.

But I guess I should get back to talking about the actual movie. Leone learned while making his Spaghetti Westerns how to combine a stately, visually-focused film style with violent subject matter to elevate it above simple crass entertainment, and that translates very well over to mob movies. There's some absolutely wonderful imagery here, and the way it is combined with some really conceptually ugly scenes lends the whole thing a certain dark beauty. People get killed quickly and for little reason, and sexuality is depicted with a shocking frankness, and the main characters are most certainly not good people, as they make sure to show you repeatedly. But you still manage to find some measure of sympathy for them, in part because the time jumping shows how a youth of recklessness and crime can end with a broken old man filled with guilt and regret. It's the kind of thing you lose when, say, you reedit the entire film into chronological order.

Performance-wise, the movie is quite good. De Niro was sort of out of his period as a true genius of the craft, but he's still solid in both time periods. Woods is pretty excellent, managing the balance of a character who the protagonist both loves and is persistently troubled by, and he mostly manages to sell an ending that I otherwise thought was out of step with what I had come to expect from the story. William Forsythe is another of the game, and his gap-toothed grin and droopy eyelids add a little something to every scene he's in. Both women who play Deborah have the ability to make you believe a guy who could have almost any girl he wants would want her instead. Joe Pesci has a very small role, probably as a favor to De Niro, and he's as restrained as I've ever seen him. He and Burt Young are both good in a pivotal part of the plot that doesn't take up much time, but is still pretty essential to bridging the gaps in the story. There isn't quite the expansive cast of colorful characters you might see in another take on the same idea, but all of the ones who are important are very well drawn. It's not a perfect movie, and it really is just a bit too long in some areas. But it's the kind of work that really should be seen by more people, the way it was intended.

Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream is about as different a film from The Wrestler as you could imagine, at least in terms of style. They're both good, sad films, but they tell their stories in very different ways. They're on completely opposite ends of the naturalism spectrum. Requiem uses the medium of film itself to convey mood, and along with all the stylistic touches it's a very effective technique. Very basically, it's a movie about addiction, as four interconnected all people go from casual users of various drugs to becoming completely addicted and stuck in horrible situations. Time dilation conveys the meaninglessness of time when under the influence, SnorriCam (a camera mounted so it's always looking at the actor's face) shots show disorientation and trauma, and a signature super close-up/fast cut shot depicts the many different ways the characters take their drugs. As they descend deeper into their struggles, scenes get shorter and shorter and the cuts get faster and faster before it all becomes overwhelming to watch, and sort of pulls you into the horrors they are facing.

It's a well-told story, although for whatever reason I found myself struggling to connect with the characters. Maybe it's because I knew they were doomed from the outset, but I found myself intrigued by their struggles rather than concerned. The acting is good - leads Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly are a likable couple before their need to get high pulls them apart, Marlon Wayans is surprisingly solid as Leto's friend who helps him get involved with dealing, and Ellen Burstyn got an Academy Award nomination for her startling descent from standard old lady to pill popping train wreck. But while the film work was good at putting you in another mindset, it was also at times gimmicky, and seemed to reduce the weight of what was happening when it was trying too hard to be clever. I have an inkling I would have liked it more in high school, but there was something odd about seeing something as heavy as crippling drug addiction often get depicted by cutesy camera cuts. It was less like a film and more like a visual experiment. A really good one, but less effective than it might have been otherwise.