ORIGINALLY, IT WAS going to be just another action film: an Indiana Jones-style adventure about two white men chasing a rare gem. The script for Blood Diamond had been languishing at Warner Bros for a few years until screenwriter Charles Leavitt - whose last credited work was the Kevin Spacey film K-Pax - got involved.
Then the story took on an altogether different shape. By the time Leavitt met producer Paula Weinstein, he'd long been interested in the crisis created by so-called conflict diamonds (stones mined by warlords to finance their military operations) in Africa, but wanted to tell it from the point of view of an ordinary African.
'I immersed myself in research, interviewing people on different aspects of the diamond business, a friend from [Medecins Sans Frontieres], read a lot of books, and pored over Global Witness reports and the transcripts of UN Security Council meetings,' says Leavitt.
As a screenwriter, he says his dreams were realised when Djimon Hounsou accepted the part of Solomon Vandy, a fisherman whose life and family are imperilled by the diamond trade of Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Ed Zwick - who produced The Last Samurai and I Am Sam - was signed to direct, Leonardo DiCaprio became co-star with Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly - and a big-budget film was born.
But a mountain of research had to be done first. As Zwick delved into the bloodshed and civil war of that time, he came across a 2000 documentary called Cry Freetown, by Sierra Leone journalist Sorious Samura, who recorded what was happening in the country as people fled. The programme is perhaps the most authoritative record of those events. He and Zwick forged a friendship, and Samura became a consultant.
Based on actual events, Blood Diamond is hard-hitting and at times difficult to watch - an opening scene shows the mutilation of young men in a village. The film has been mired in controversy because it reveals the dark underbelly of a trade thought to be elitist and glamorous. Those with a vested interest in the diamond business apparently feared that the film might dampen demand for the product. Blood Diamond sheds light on the horrific means once employed by some countries to mine and export the stones.
