The small African nation of Sierra Leone is situated next to Liberia, and while Liberia produces billions of dollars of diamonds annually, Sierra Leone produces virtually none. The reason for this, at least according to this movie, is that the diamonds within Sierra Leone are taken by rebel forces and then sold to fund their rebellion.
In the process, countless families are broken up, with the lucky ones killed off immediately, but many others left maimed, physically or emotionally (or in many cases both). The healthy men are used for mining these diamonds, while the youth can be taken to replenish the forces that are killed in the process of doing so. It's not a pretty sight.
Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) was, by some accounts, both lucky and unlucky. He was lucky in that he wasn't killed, but he was unlucky that when he was taken to work in the diamond mine (which was really just standing in a river, looking for loose diamonds), his wife and children were left to fend for themselves.
He was lucky in that his hands were not chopped of so that he could not oppose the rebels, but he was unlucky because his son was taken by the rebels and trained in their ways, to become one of them. The only reason that he survived was because he was healthy and could look for the diamonds. His son later survived only because it was how they hoped to get to Solomon. But I get ahead of myself.
As Solomon stood in the river one day, he noticed the man next to him attempting to hide a diamond in his mouth. When their captors noticed it too, the man was forced to give up the diamond. Then he was shot and killed. Solomon got back to work. Not much later, he found the largest diamond he had ever imagined. Hiding it between his toes, he managed to sneak it into the jungle and bury it, and just before the boss killed him for it, the mine was attacked, and Solomon escaped that death, but he was thrown into prison as a captive. Anything to be out of the mine.
There, he attracted the attention of many, who heard from the boss (who was also captured) that he had found this huge diamond. One of the men there was Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a smuggler who hoped one day to find such a rock and escape from Africa. So when Archer was released, he managed to get Solomon released as well, and they formed an uneasy truce.
Using Solomon's loyalty to his family, Archer managed to use his connections to reunite him with the family he could find - but that's when Solomon found that his son was nowhere to be found. By then, his son had been captured by the rebels. That's when Solomon and Archer decided to head back to the mine to try and find the diamond that had been buried.
It wasn't an easy trek, but they eventually made it, and they even found Solomon's son. ALong the way they met journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), who was hoping to get the story on these conflict diamonds and bring down the diamond cartels who used them, but she needed Archer's help to do it. Luckily for her, he needed her help to get to where they were going.
At the end of the road, Archer had to bring in his old army buddy to take care of the rebels, and then kill him off as well, but he and Solomon found the diamond. Unfortunately for him, he took a bullet himself, and never made it out of Africa. Solomon was a bit more lucky, and he helped Maddy to get the information she needed, as well as what appeared to be a whole lot of money, which will help put his family back together in a much nicer environment.
Though there is a lot of disturbing content here, such as the hacking off of limbs, and the brainwashing of children, it's a good movie, exceptionally well done. It just drags a bit towards the end.
Rated R for strong violence and language.
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