Blood Diamond starts out strong and ends strong, but the middle wobbled. Its focus was action, while the rest was drama. The story as a whole and the acting by all three main characters was quite good. As a result, several scenes stood out as very powerful ones. The action in the movie was the archetype of relentless tension. However, the directing, writing, editing, and music were all adequate, but nothing special.
I thought it tried too hard to be too many things, which made each thing seem less important than if the movie had just been about that. It talks about conflict diamonds, child soldiers, the general situation in Africa, reporting and smuggling as professions, and family--but none quite satisfactorily. The love story between DiCaprio and Connelly was so forced and unnecessary. The final 5-10 minutes of the movie felt like poor filmmaking to me, telling us nothing we didn't already know and weakening the impact and power of the piece.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0450259/