Blood Diamond By: Jaylen Powell Matthew Murphy

Summary Blood Diamond is a movie that will make everyone who has ever bought, or treasured the miracle of the natural beauty of a diamond feel guilty, and regret such actions. The movie is centered around the international dilemma of conflict diamonds that are being mined and sold in the heart of Africa, with a heavy price, the illegal practices costs innocent men and women their lives. Leonardo DiCaprio, who is the main character of the film, is a diamond smuggler that knows and participates in the corruption that world power business people have and has a change of heart in order to help his new "friend", Solomen save his son, and find his family.

Matt's Reflection After watching the movie Blood Diamond, I did think a lot more about where and how I get the things that I have today. It is not only the diamonds but things like my shoes and clothes that I take for granted every day. I am sure there is someone somewhere that is working day in and day out at a hardly livable wage to make the things that I think are a standard of life. I know that not everywhere in the world people are not having their hands cut off and their families taken away for these types of things, but this is the most real movie that I have seen that has made me really think about these things.

Jaylen's Reflection Even blood diamond was somewhat unrealistic at times, the message about the neglagence of the American people in their values was clear. The instances that were slightly unbelievable for me were the moments of suspense, like the times the main characters came through a bullet storm without a scratch and how they miraculously were saved at the last second whenever they were in immediate danger. By adding a story-book ending and not killing off the main characters this took away from the overall morale of the movie. Also Leonardo DeCaprio had one of the worst accents throughout the movie that made it really annoying to listen to whenever he was speaking. Other than stints of poor acting the movie did what is was supposed to do which was to highlight the horrible effects that greed of world powers,has on third world countries and their people.

History/ Cause and Effect The international issue of the illegal distribution of conflict "blood" diamonds is a difficult problem to fix as it presents us with a dilemma. What from the outside seems like a pretty straightforward realization of life over diamonds, is not so easily solved. On the west coast of Africa, where the diamonds are mined, a perfect storm of capitalist supply and demand has taken root. We as world power consumers place a high value "demand", on diamonds that just so happen to be located in war stricken areas of Africa. These diamonds are being used as currency, thus fueling the many civil wars. In exchange for weapons the diamonds are smuggled into peaceful countries in Africa where diamonds are prevalent and mining is legal such as the country of Angola. After they are certified as clean diamonds then exported to countries such as the U.S. and end up on the ring fingers of many of our citizens without them giving it a second thought, or realization of how many peoples' lives were impacted in this purchase.

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