He travels to Cape Town to meet his employer, Colonel Coetzee ( Arnold Vosloo), an Afrikaner formerly with the apartheid-era South African Defence Force, who now commands a private military company. Hearing of the pink diamond in prison, Archer arranges for himself and Vandy to be freed from detention. They were intended for Rudolph van de Kaap ( Marius Weyers), a corrupt South African mining executive and a major part of the international diamond industry. Archer, a veteran of the 32 Battalion during the South African Border War, was jailed while trying to smuggle diamonds into Liberia. Both Vandy and Poison are incarcerated in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown, along with Danny Archer ( Leonardo DiCaprio), a Rhodesian smuggler and mercenary. Vandy buries the stone before being captured. Captain Poison tries to take the stone, but the area is suddenly raided by government troops. One morning, while mining a river, Vandy discovers an enormous pink diamond.
While his family escapes the rebels, Vandy is assigned to a workforce overseen by Captain Poison ( David Harewood), a ruthless warlord. One such unfortunate local is fisherman Solomon Vandy ( Djimon Hounsou) from Shenge. Rebel factions such as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) frequently terrorize the countryside, intimidating Mende locals and enslaving many to harvest diamonds, which fund their increasingly successful war effort. The film is set in 1999 in Sierra Leone, a West African nation ravaged by a decade of civil war.
In addition, DiCaprio and Hounsou were nominated for Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role and Outstanding Male Actor in a Supporting Role at the 13th Screen Actors Guild Awards. DiCaprio received a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (also nominated that year in the same category for The Departed). The film grossed $171 million worldwide and received five Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for DiCaprio and Best Supporting Actor for Hounsou. The film received mainly positive reviews, with praise directed toward the performances of DiCaprio and Hounsou. It led to development of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which sought to certify the origin of rough diamonds in order to curb the trade in conflict diamonds the certification scheme has since been mostly abandoned as ineffective. The film's ending, in which a conference is held concerning blood diamonds, refers to a historic meeting that took place in Kimberley, South Africa, in 2000. It also portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of civilians' hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections.
Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1991–2002, the film depicts a country torn apart by the struggle between government loyalists and insurgent forces. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies around the world. Blood Diamond is a 2006 American political war action thriller film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou.