‘Stone’ hides its best nugget

Inside the two-hour, self-consciously artistic “Blood From a Stone” (9 tonight, History Channel) is a straightforward story struggling to get out.

Would that the makers of “Blood” had liberated that story rather than marinating it in atmospherics and breathy dialogue. Less is not only more, it also lifts a story higher on the believability scale.

The basic true-life story of “Blood” is a good one: An aging GI from World War II remembers burying 40 uncut diamonds in a battlefield foxhole on the border of France and Germany. An Israeli treasure hunter -- an ebullient life force named Yaron Svoray -- is determined to find the diamonds. His quest takes on Don Quixote overtones as he searches not only for precious stones but for self-enlightenment.

Some of the side riffs are also compelling: the worldwide diamond trade, the Nazi death camps, a search for the family of the GI’s dead buddy.

“Blood” argues that the diamonds had been seized by the Nazis from Jews taken to the death camps.

Narrated by Tom Sizemore and adapted from a book by Svoray and former New York Times reporter Richard Hammer, “Blood” uses interviews, historic film clips and dramatic re-creations to weave its tale of war and obsession.

One problem is that in switching between the real and the re-created, something is lost. The actors portraying the two GIs do such a good job that the real-life interview with the surviving GI, Sam Nyer, now 78 and living in Maine, seems flat by comparison. Svoray made more than 100 trips in 10 years to the forest where Nyer said he buried the diamonds. Nyer refused to join the hunt -- a refusal explained only by the observation that his wife opposed him returning to Europe for any reason.

There are other puzzling issues. Executives from the William Morris Agency appear at the beginning to talk about what a swell guy Svoray is; they then join the diamond hunt. Svoray sprouts a bodyguard, but just why is never fully explained. And then there’s the denouement. Was it real or staged? In show business that may be irrelevant, but in journalism it still matters.