THE CONSTANT GARDENER

Based on John le Carre's novel, This is a gripping thriller, a romantic love story, and a biting political take-down of pharmaceutical corporations that have Godlike power over life and death.
This movie is directed by Fernando Meirelles(Director of "City of god").

I wanted to watch this movie mainly because I was greatly impressed by the director's previous one.Though not of the same genre as 'city of god',This one is shot in another slum(in Kenya).

Justin Quayle(Ralph Fiennes,of Voldemort fame) is a British diplomat commissioned in Kenya. He falls in love with Tessa(Rachel weisz), back at home and marries her. Tessa is a human rights activist and she goes to Kenya with Justin and they live there for some time.(The life of the Kenyan slum dwellers is amazingly portrayed) She along with her doctor friend in kenya protests against the Govt. and big pharma companies that use the poor african people as guinea pigs for testing their new(unlaunched outside africa) drug for TB. This drug is forcefully injected on all the people who come for any other ailments(And a large no. of them die mysteriously).

When Tessa writes to the Big shot people asking them to stop this, threatening to go public about this issue if not stopped.There are consequences of threatening these high profile ppl..So she is murdered and her doctor friend tortured and murdered.

Justin,who doesnt know anything about his wife's activities tries to dig out the reason for her being murdered.He travels a lot of places,meets a lot of ppl and finds abt all this..and Finally retribution..(retribution not as in tamil cinemas)

Rachel Weisz smiles her way to winning an Oscar for this movie(really sweet smile). She is luminous in every single shot--which is quite an achievement considering that the actress is nine months pregnant, sweaty and without make-up in many scenes.

Ralph Fiennes does a neat job..The director made complete novices to act amazingly well in his previous film and a couple of characters in this film too are just laymen of Kenya.

The movie carries a social theme and is spun precisely into a 2 hr movie..The crew supposedly formed a charity trust and named it after the movie to facilitate the Kenyan people after seeing the conditions of the slums there(Admirable effort for a media person considering the fact that these kinda media people only comment while there are things that could actually be done)..
The crew actually built a School and a hospital.(Google says so)

'The Constant Gardener' winds up a bit of a mixed bag that you want to like more than you actually do. Admirably performed and admirably shot, It is an admirably courageous film admirably confronting important issues.Nevertheless, the film remains slightly distant and dispassionate, like Justin himself at the start.

Movie Rating...53/100(A 'must watcher')