rated R 

"Blood Diamond" desperately wants to be many things: political statement, action thriller, sweeping romance, family drama and a poem on the murderous human condition. It ends up being none of these.

If director Edward Zwick (“The Last Samurai,” “Glory”) had more faith in the small story at the center of film—the struggle to find a large pink diamond left behind at a rebel camp in war-torn Sierra Leone—and allowed the characters some breathing room, the movie might have had the emotional depth he was working so hard to create.As it is, “Blood Diamond” is so full of holes and laugh-out-loud coincidences that even the most relaxed movie-goers will have trouble suspending whatever disbelief they might have when entering the theater.

An example: There’s a scene where the three lead characters are walking through the dangerous, rebel-infested Sierra Leone countryside. When they are discovered by gun-toting fighters, Jennifer Connelly’s character, a journalist by the name of Maddy Bowen, charms the ferocious rebels by gathering them together for a group photo.

“She reminds me of my wife,” says the group’s leader (through translation), mocking the exhausted attitude of your average American tourista. This buffoonish exchange reminded me of the idiotic characterizations of  Indians I used to see on the 1960s sitcom “F Troop.”

The plot has several threads: Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) witnesses the destruction of his village at the hands of some type of militia (the movie does not explain the complexities of the Sierra Leone conflict, so if you don’t know the history of this country or lack a studio-written press kit, you won’t learn much about the country’s struggles here). The villagers are slaughtered, but Vandy’s wife escapes. Solomon and his oldest son Dia (a quietly beautiful performance by young Kagiso Kuypers) are captured. Solomon is forced into slave labor to mine diamonds, and Dia is turned into a chillingly cold-blooded child soldier. At the same time, international diamond smuggler Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is hustling up his latest score, but the deal goes sour and Archer lands in jail.

At the forced labor camp where Solomon is mining for diamonds, he finds a stunning pink diamond—a “blood diamond” in the parlance of the trade—and is arrested just moments after he has buried it.

Solomon lands in the same jail as Archer. When the injured leader of the militia who had discovered Solomon hiding the diamond is also taken to the same jail, he sees Solomon and accuses him of harboring it. Archer witnesses the accusation and sees the brave Solomon as a profitable ally. The pair’s attempt to recapture the hidden stone forms the center of the story.

In order to do that, Archer, Solomon and the villainous militia leader are all released from jail. Go figure. It is also a good thing that Archer has a drink at a bar where he can meet journalist Maddy Bowen, who knows all about Archer.

Bowen is trying to break the story of the illicit diamond trade wide open, and she hopes Archer will be her main source.
During all this, there is some attempt to provide the audience with information about the diamond trade. This is delivered in a semi-documentary fashion, much like we learned about Las Vegas in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.” But the background in “Blood Diamond” is so sketchy that it’s worthless to try to follow it, or to try to determine who or why any of these characters are connected. Archer knows the heads of the fictional diamond merchant family Van De Kaap, but he also knows Col. Coetzee (played by Arnold Vasloo, who some may remember as Imhotep from the Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies) and lots of other people. That they all seem to find each other at the most opportune moments in the wide open spaces of Sierra Leone tells you about the logic of the picture.

Scenes of romance and drama and intrigue are all punctuated by spasms of grotesque violence, most of which are directed with the kind of chaotic savagery pioneered by Spielberg in “Saving Private Ryan.” I reference all these other movies because “Blood Diamond” is really an old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, played out against the newly fashionable backdrop of Africa and all its myriad mysteries, romances and troubles. The movie is also old-fashioned in another way: it has genuine movie stars. That the three leads, DiCaprio, Connelly and Hounsou, survive this muck intact is a testimony to some formidable talent at work.

It may have seemed foolish at one point for DiCaprio to have devoted himself to Scorsese for three successive films (“Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator” and “The Departed”), but the schooling has paid off. DiCaprio has emerged as an actor of great craft and charisma. He’s strikingly handsome and has a worried, likable face, and his Archer is solid and detailed.

Connelly (“A Beautiful Mind”) is one of the most luminously beautiful actors in movies today, but her part here is impossible. She plays one of those movie journalists who only want to do a story if it can change the world, and the scenes of forced tension between her and DiCaprio are so bad that you feel slightly embarrassed. Their conflict, as written by screenwriter Charles Leavitt (who also wrote the screenplay for “The Mighty,” which was based on Seacoast writer Rodman Philbrick’s novel “Freak the Mighty”) is without merit. Their resistance to one another is present only because it is supposed to make their end-of-movie affection seem earned. But Connelly says her lines with such clear conviction you really wish her thoughts were better constructed.

Hounsou’s role is more complicated. He’s a wounded, tortured father, but also a survivor. Only an actor of real subtlety and commitment could have made this role as seamless as he does, powering himself through the weak material.

There are some memorable images. They involve the scenes showing the actual children of Sierra Leone who were and are the victims of real savagery: the boys and girls who have had their arms and legs hacked off. This is not movie trickery. We see the horrific effect of global economics and political oppression, and it is not romantic or thrilling in any kind of cinematic way. The fact that these children are only briefly seen in this maddening trifle is a terrible shame. They are the real story here.