Word: hounsou
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...bullet-riddled SUV storms along a dirt track in Mozambique, spraying out dust and rocks like a vacuum cleaner in reverse. Hunched behind the steering wheel, Leonardo DiCaprio wrestles the vehicle while Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou grip the rear seat as if their lives depended on it, which, in this scene of director Edward Zwick's film, they do. "Faster!" shouts Zwick. "We need more speed." DiCaprio nods and backs up, and the bucking drive begins again...
...have largely fixed the problem of conflict, or "blood," diamonds--gems mined illegally by warlords and sold to buy weapons and pay soldiers. And they intend to ensure that the movie--which ties together the stories of a diamond-smuggling mercenary (DiCaprio) chasing a rare pink diamond, a fisherman (Hounsou) searching for his kidnapped son, and a reporter (Connelly) after a scoop--is viewed as a fictitious take on history...
...other actors too, the movie was more than just a job: Connelly is an Amnesty International ambassador, and Hounsou has boyhood memories of refugees fleeing war in Liberia for his country, Benin. "To put light to some of the issues," he says, "not just blood diamonds but some of the other problems, it's a great thing to do for my continent...
Timing matters. Steven Spielberg's 1997 slave-revolt tale got shut out amid plagiarism charges. The suit was dropped, but not in time for ANTHONY HOPKINS or DJIMON HOUNSOU to take home a statue...
...film. What looks like squalor to us looks like a wonderland to them, a place to be explored and embraced. They're eager and innocent and unfrightened--especially when they reach out to "the Screaming Man" who lives downstairs. His real name is Mateo, he is played by Djimon Hounsou (Amistad), and he's a reclusive, angry artist who is dying of AIDS. The kids bring him back to his essential sweetness--and to an unsentimental acceptance of death...