We watched the Constant Gardener last night, a political thriller based on a John LeCarre novel, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Wiesz. The movie is about the relationship between a career man in Britain's foreign service and his impassioned and indelicate (when it comes to behaving diplomatically) wife. The wife becomes embroiled in a dangerous game pitting her and an African doctor against big pharmaceutical companies who are testing drugs on the local population in Kenya, without regard for the side effects. The husband is unaware of this until his wife is murdered; she wanted to spare him the details to try and shelter his career from potential blowback. Instead, he tries to finish what his wife started -- exposing the pharmaceutical bean counting of African lives (treated as expendable in the pursuit of higher profit) and the British Foreign Service's complicity in it.
Great movie, and a typical sterling performance from Ralph Fiennes, who is without a doubt one of the more gifted actors performing. The only problem I had was with the ending, or rather with the ending for Ralph Fiennes. Once Fiennes has arranged for the public outing of the Foreign Service and pharmaceutical companies' roles in the deaths of its African test subjects, Fiennes goes to the scene of his wife's murder, knowing full well he'll be murdered too, without any explanation of his motives that ring true. While he clearly is affected by the loss of his wife, he doesn't seem the suicidal type, and he doesn't seem to be seeking some Rambo-esque confrontation with his wife's killers. Just didn't get it...
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