Blood Diamond (film) - Plot

Plot

It is 1999 and the troubled West African nation of Sierra Leone is ravaged by major political unrest. Rebel factions such as the Revolutionary United Front frequently terrorise the open countryside, intimidating Mende locals and enslaving many to harvest diamonds, which fund their increasingly successful war effort. One such unfortunate is fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), from Shenge, who has been assigned to a workforce overseen by a ruthless warlord, Captain Poison (David Harewood).

On a particularly tense morning, Vandy discovers an enormous pink diamond in the riverbank and buries it in the soft earth. Poison learns of the stone, but before he can act on this knowledge the area is raided by government security forces. Both men are subsequently incarcerated in Freetown along with Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Rhodesian gunrunner jailed while attempting to smuggle diamonds into Liberia for corrupt South African mining executive Rudolph Van de Kaap (Marius Weyers).

Having managed to learn of the pink diamond's existence, Archer arranges to have Vandy freed from detention. He then travels to Cape Town, meeting with his former military contacts, including Colonel Coetzee - an Afrikaner late of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force. Danny remarks that he hopes to abscond with Solomon's stone and leave the Dark Continent forever, but Coetzee indicates that his lost stake in Archer's botched Liberian operation entitles him to the diamond as compensation. The former returns to Sierra Leone, locates Vandy, and offers to help him find his family if he will recover his prize.

Meanwhile, RUF insurgents initiate an escalation of hostilities. Freetown falls to their advance while Vandy's son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers) is among those rounded up to serve as a child soldier under a liberated Captain Poison. Archer and Solomon narrowly escape to Guinea, where they plan to infiltrate the Kono with an American journalist, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), in exchange for giving her inside information on the illicit diamond trade. Colonel Coetzee and his private army also turn up in the conflict zone, having been contracted by authorities to repulse the renewed rebel offensive.

While Bowen is evacuated with her story, the two men set out for Captain Poison's former encampment on their own. Dia, now stationed with the RUF garrison there, is confronted - although he refuses to acknowledge his father. Archer radios the site's coordinates to Coetzee, who directs an air strike via an Mi-24 helicopter gunship. Vandy locates Captain Poison and decapitates him with a shovel while attacking mercenaries rout the warlord's surviving men. Coeztee then forces a reluctant Solomon to produce the diamond, but is killed by Archer, who has deduced that he will have them both eliminated once their usefulness has expired. Dia holds them both at gunpoint, although Solomon convinces him of his own retained innocence and the two renew their previous bond.

While escaping from the vengeful South Africans, Danny collapses with a mortal injury and surrenders the stone to Solomon, instructing him to take it for his family. Vandy and his son rendezvous with a local pilot, Nabil (Jimi Mistry), who flies them to safety while Archer makes a final phone call to Maddy Bowen, charging her to assist Solomon. Gazing out on the African landscape, Archer grasps a handful of bloodstained soil and dies peacefully, fulfilling Coetzee's prediction that the Rhodesian smuggler would never leave his African home.

Shortly afterwards, Vandy, who is now living in the United Kingdom, meets with representatives of Van de Kaap, who wishes to acquire his jewel. Bowen photographs the deal for publication in her article detailing the trade in conflict gems and exposes Van de Kaap's criminal actions. Meanwhile, Solomon's guest appearance at a conference on "blood diamonds" in Kimberley is met with a standing ovation as the film ends.