Holiday Movie Guide

BLOOD DIAMOND
It will be hard to think of diamonds as a girl's best friend after seeing "Blood Diamond," Ed Zwick's slick, hard-hitting political thriller. The movie pitches us into the midst of a barbaric civil war in Sierra Leone in 1999, in which the profits from illegal, or "conflict," diamonds, sold on the black market to reputable European companies (a tiny splinter of the diamond trade), are used to fund arms on both sides of the war.

A rare pink diamond, coveted by all, is the "MacGuffin" that sets the plot in motion. It's found, and secretly buried, by Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman rounded up by marauding rebel forces and forced to work in their mines. They have also kidnapped his 14-year-old son to join their legions of brainwashed, doped-up child soldiers, and Solomon is counting on the money his diamond will bring to save his boy. The gem is equally coveted by diamond smuggler Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a tough, amoral ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe, for whom the diamond represents his ticket out of war-torn Africa. He promises to help Solomon rescue his family for a cut of the profits, but he in turn needs the help of American journalist Maddy Brown (Jennifer Connelly). What she wants is Archer's help in exposing the complicity of the Western diamond trade in the exploitation of the Third World. Their quest to retrieve the prize fuels the movie's nonstop action.

Fast-moving and brutally entertaining, Zwick's movie, from a Charles Leavitt screenplay, is undeniably gripping, but the by-the-book Hollywood melodrama (Will the cynical Archer discover a conscience? Will the aggressive journalist fall for his bad-boy charm?) doesn't always sit comfortably with the hellish images of hacked-off limbs, machine-gun-toting child soldiers and teeming refugee camps. There's something disturbingly formulaic about the ferociously well-staged outbursts of violence, which arrive with a metronomic regularity that can seem more opportunistic than organic.

But there is much to admire here. Zwick ("Legends of the Fall," "The Last Samurai"), who can err on the stolid side, seems energized and engaged by the African milieu: he's in peak form. DiCaprio, transformed by his pitch-perfect South African accent, is utterly convincing as a tough, driven adventurer: he exudes the masculine charisma he hadn't grown into in "Gangs of New York." Hounsou, as always, cuts an imposing, sympathetic figure, but it would be nice if, for once, he didn't have to play a noble moral paragon. "Blood Diamond" only skims the surface of many important subjects—the script doesn't begin to explain what the civil war was about. But if it opens a few eyes, it will have done its job.

CHILDREN OF MEN
London, 2027. While the rest of the world has collapsed into chaos, the United Kingdom conjured up in Alfonso Cuarón's gripping but problematic dystopian thriller is hanging on by a militaristic thread. Terrorist bombs explode near Piccadilly. Immigrants and refugees are rounded up and held in pens, awaiting deportation. The world is plagued by infertility: it's been 19 years since a baby was born. How do you live with no hope of a future for the species?

The former activist Theo (Clive Owen) has succumbed to whisky-fueled numbness—until he's called upon by his ex-lover (Julianne Moore), now a radical leader fighting for refugee rights, to get transit papers for Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), a young African woman who desperately needs to flee the country. There's good reason for the urgency: Kee is pregnant.