Frosty's dentist's office is only a few blocks away from Krackerjak Square, so after her appointment Tuesday morning, we pedaled over to the Madstone to catch an American indie called DIAMOND MEN. It's about a somewhat long-in-the-tooth traveling wholesale diamond salesman (Robert Forster) who has a heart attack and agrees to train his replacement (Donnie Wahlberg) after being fired for having become too big a health risk to insure. This is a promising premise, especially since Daniel M. Cohen, the writer and director, was a diamond salesman himself before he took up moviemaking.

Unfortunately, DIAMOND MEN shows us next to nothing about the art and science of selling diamonds. As for the human drama, the characterizations are stereotypical, the dialogue is contrived, and the plot depends on one improbability after another. For example, we are asked to believe that an
established diamond company would entrust a suitcase with a million dollars worth of diamonds in it to a smart-ass, irresponsible, hard-drinking party-boy cocksman who's been given a grand total of two weeks training after being hired with no previous experience in selling diamonds. If you buy that, I have some UFO photos you might be interested in.

Robert Forster does a good job of acting, but nearly everyone else hams it up, turning his character into a caricature; blame this primarily on the script and the director, not the cast. When nearly every scene rings false, it's the boss who's at fault. DIAMOND MEN should have been titled ZIRCON BOYS, and Frosty and I would've had a better time if we'd just stayed in the dentist's office.

My rating on the Watson scale: 1.5