I watched this DVD last night: compelling enough, even exciting, but overlong in the standard fashion now (where every film must skirt at least 2 1/2 hrs) and unnecessarily unclear about the politics of the area, Sierra Leone, in which it was set. The interesting fact is that (spoilers) the film follows the same narrative route as Children of Men and The Constant Gardner : a cynical, amoral or at least disengaged, white men sacrifices his life for a ‘racial other’–thereby presumably redeeming himself, establishing his credentials as part of humanity and making it possible for a black man/woman to escape from the horrifying conditions of his/her current environment. What gives with this move–white guilt which can nevertheless not find the strength to step out of the limelight, the economic necessity for major films to have major (mainly white) stars, a condescending attitude toward Africa and Africans or a persistent religious impulse in which it is necessary to achieve salvation by good works? do you regard this narrative standby cynically–a kind of artistic condescending post colonialism–or more generously as the persistence of a moral viewpoint, evident in so many stories, emphasizing the need to transform the individual “from within”–something no doubt that many white westerners could use? by the way here’s a useful article on the history and current issue of the “conflict diamond”