"Blood Diamond" isn't your typical Hollywood film, despite starring Titanic heart throb Leonardo DiCaprio. The film has barely been out on general release for a few days in the United States, but it's already provoked a barrage of comments in the press for its implict comment on diamond-fuelled wars in Africa.

The film is none too kind to the diamond industry, portrayed as a cut-throat trade where profiteers buy gems from Sierra Leone's rebels who use the money to get weapons, prolonging a cycle of war and suffering.

The film's critics say this is simply not a fair portrayal.

The New York Post dismisses it as "lefty voodoo: the belief that anytime anyone in the world is hurting, America must be sticking a pin in a doll." In other words, the paper says it's laughable to think that Sierra Leone's civil war wasn't caused by "(the) country's long history of lawlessness and corruption but from the sparkly ring fingers of our Melissas and Ashleys."

Two diamond experts writing in the Christian Science Monitor say: "The cinematic history lesson about the now-ended civil war in Sierra Leone may be compelling - but don't start boycotting diamonds." Marcus Noland and J. Brooks Spector, authors of "The Stuff of Legends: Diamonds and Development in southern Africa", say the reality is that the diamond world is not as chaotic and unregulated as it may seem from the film.

In fact, the Kimberly Process, a four-year old international certification system, ensures that conflict diamonds don't find their way into the market, they argue. As a result of these new rules, conflict diamonds have fallen from 15 per cent to less than 1 percent of the global trade, Noland and Spector maintain.

But it's debatable how successful can a voluntary self-regulation system like the Kimberly Process can be, goes the counter-argument from the Global Policy Forum, a non-profit organisation that monitors U.N. policy-making.

The Chicago Tribune isn't convinced the diamond-monitoring process "from factory to finger," isn't quite right yet, and cites a U.S. Government Accountability Office report which says smugglers still find ways of bypassing the regulations.

Noland and Spector also say it's wrong to boycott diamonds because it would be counterproductive to the peaceful countries where they're mined. Take Botswana, where half of the country's revenue comes from diamonds and the national diamond-mining company is heavily involved in the free provision of antiretroviral drugs. Taking away this funding would be devastating for people who depend on free treatment in the country with the world's second-highest HIV infection rate, they say.

And it's thanks to diamonds that Botswana has been one of the fastest growing economies in the last 25 years, Botswana's Kago Moshashane, who currently chairs the Kimberly Process, points out on AllAfrica.com.

That's all very well, but how much of the revenue from diamonds really finds its way back to the people? It's a particularly acute problem in Sierra Leone, according to Marc Santora in the New York Times. He says the government's cut from rough stones is 3 percent, which translates to about $15 (£7.50) from a rough stone that's worth $500 (£255) at the start of its journey and later sold for around $5,000 (£2550) in the States.

And what do the people that buy diamonds think? While some customers might now be questioning the origin of their engagement and wedding rings, diamond sales are unlikely to drop drastically, the New York Times predicts. In fact, as a father of a bride-to-be pointed out in an interview with the paper: "It's like oil. You're still going to buy oil."

The author of the book used as the main source for DiCaprio's film is cautious in his verdict about how his work was translated on to the big screen. Greg Campbell, author of "Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones," says the diamond industry has certainly turned a blind eye to conflict diamonds some of the time. But it might have got more than its fair share of blame in the film portrayal, he writes in the Christian Science Monitor.

Nonetheless, Campbell concludes, "the story of Sierra Leone, and its destruction on behalf of the world's symbols of peace and love, is one that deserves the broad audience that Hollywood can deliver."

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