This story is based on how businessmen, a smuggler and fishermen are on a mission to possess diamonds in an unstable country who has become a battle zone as mutinous forces and government both want control
It doesn't entirely evade the issue at its core - conflict diamonds - in favour of pure action by way of guns and planes, thrills and spills; but it hardly embraces the subject fully either.
Blood Diamond is a movie zircon. It doesn't cut glass, but it cuts plot, character, and credibility. It could be Hotel Rwanda, but instead it's Motel Deep-Six.
[Director Zwick] is craftsman enough that the pace never slackens, the chase scenes thrill, and the battle scenes sicken. And if it makes viewers think twice about buying their sweethearts that hard-won hunk of ice for Christmas, so much the better.