Hollywood Plays Rough With Diamonds

A bullet-riddled SUV storms along a dirt track in Mozambique, spraying out dust and rocks like a vacuum cleaner in reverse. Hunched behind the steering wheel, Leonardo DiCaprio wrestles the vehicle while Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou grip the rear seat as if their lives depended on it, which, in this scene of director Edward Zwick's film, they do. "Faster!" shouts Zwick. "We need more speed." DiCaprio nods and backs up, and the bucking drive begins again.

The actors aren't the only ones getting a rough ride in Blood Diamond, an action thriller about the illegal gem trade set during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. The Warner Bros. film, due for release on Dec. 8, has the diamond industry concerned that moviegoers may walk out of cinemas with the idea that all diamonds are tainted. The gem folks, including

De Beers, which produces more than 40% of the world's diamonds, argue that they have largely fixed the problem of conflict, or "blood," diamonds--gems mined illegally by warlords and sold to buy weapons and pay soldiers. And they intend to ensure that the movie--which ties together the stories of a diamond-smuggling mercenary (DiCaprio) chasing a rare pink diamond, a fisherman (Hounsou) searching for his kidnapped son, and a reporter (Connelly) after a scoop--is viewed as a fictitious take on history.

Human-rights campaigners, however, welcome Hollywood's focus on the issue and say it has helped tighten industry oversight even before the film's release. In the run-up to the holiday period--peak season for diamond sales and blockbuster movies--the public spat makes an interesting study of how a big studio movie can threaten a $60 billion-a-year global retail industry, one that has previously thrived on its association with all things Hollywood, and how that business can fight back.

During an on-set interview, Zwick is quick to emphasize that "first and foremost, this is intended to be an entertaining and dramatic movie." At the same time, the man behind thirtysomething and The Last Samurai takes a storyteller's pleasure in his exploration of Sierra Leone's bloody conflict, which ended in 2002, and the way illegal diamond mining fueled that war. "The issues it evokes are universal, both personally and politically. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about child soldiers. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about refugees. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about bad governance," says Zwick. "So much is there in this small place."