Hollywood Plays Rough With Diamonds

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You also can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without hiring some really big stars to get people to come see it. And luckily for Zwick, it's the kind of tale that draws in actors looking for an Important Subject. "There was something really authentic about the story," says DiCaprio, who agreed to play mercenary Danny Archer after meeting twice with Zwick and watching a 4-min. DVD featuring child soldiers and the aftermath of their battles that the director had patched together. Before shooting began, DiCaprio spent a month in South Africa meeting former mercenaries, undergoing military training and learning the local accent. Although he talked with several ex-mercs and diamond experts, it was a military adviser on the film, a Rhodesian (as some white citizens of Zimbabwe still call themselves) named Duff Gifford, who captivated him. "He's really the man who brought me to the understanding of what this culture was like, what it was like to fight in these wars, the painful things that he'd seen, the love he has for Africa and the bitterness he has as well," says DiCaprio. And that's not all he learned. "They drink a hell of a lot of beer and Jägermeister," says the star, no wimp in the party department, with a chuckle. "That was their hard-core drink of choice: flaming Jägermeister shots, which I can't hang with."

For the other actors too, the movie was more than just a job: Connelly is an Amnesty International ambassador, and Hounsou has boyhood memories of refugees fleeing war in Liberia for his country, Benin. "To put light to some of the issues," he says, "not just blood diamonds but some of the other problems, it's a great thing to do for my continent."

The movie follows the fortunes of a soldier turned diamond smuggler who works with both warlords and an international diamond corporation. He gets into a scrape and needs to find a huge pink diamond hidden by a fisherman in forced servitude to said warlords. And he meets a gorgeous crusading journalist who knows he can help her blow the story wide open. Along the way, many unromantic acts are perpetrated in the pursuit of the gemstones.

The film is historical, but the history is recent. And since a diamond's worth is intimately connected with its significance for romance, the gem industry knows it can't be too careful about the film. The World Diamond Council (W.D.C.) hired crisis p.r. firm Sitrick & Co. to coordinate a reported $15 million campaign to counter the movie's message. Full-page newspaper advertisements detailed the measures diamond producers have taken to end the flow of conflict diamonds. An industry website, diamondfacts.org sprang up, retailers were encouraged to educate themselves about the issue, and Zwick was pushed to tout the complete success of the Kimberley Process, a diamond-policing mechanism instituted in 2002 (see sidebar), in the script. He declined.

"I'm not worried at all by the film as long as people get to know the facts," says Eli Izhakoff, head of the W.D.C. "We see this as an opportunity to make sure that people are aware of all the good stuff the industry has done." Rosalind Kainyah, until recently De Beers' London-based director of public and corporate affairs, is a little more direct. "I'm sure that Warner Bros. wouldn't want to harm Africa," she says. "So I believe they'll want to put the movie in a historic context."