In Blood Diamond (Warner Bros., opening today), Leonardo DiCaprio “plays Danny Archer, a Rhodesian-born diamond smuggler who, having been orphaned during his native country’s violent struggles in the 1970s, has spent most of his 30-some years crisscrossing the continent as a soldier of fortune and a merchant of misery. Tousled and tanned, with a long, slicing gait and a killer smile, Danny looks as if he were born for trouble of the sweetest kind.

“But Mr. DiCaprio, perhaps because he knows that much of the audience has already crawled into his pocket, plays the smuggler as the scum he is. Even as the film coaxes Danny toward redemption, the actor fights to hold his ground and the truth of a character who has inspired the most fully sustained performance of his adult life.” — from Manohla Dargis‘ N.Y. Times review.