The Constant Gardner (2005)

The Constant Gardner is a sloppy and ineffective thriller about major pharmaceutical companies “testing” drugs on unsuspecting populations in Africa. The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle, a member of the British High Commission located in Africa, and Rachel Weisz as Tessa Quayle, Justin’s wife, who uncovers the drug companies true plans.

All of the elements to make a great thriller are there… politics, large companies taking advantage of the innocent, bribery, lust, love, sacrifice... this movie should be something great, but it isn’t for two main reasons...

Reason one, the directing style. The film, directed by Fernando Meirelles, has a very invasive style, with a lot of close ups, handle held camera moves, quick cuts that move quickly between the past and the present… it’s a case where the style gets in the way of the story. Such a choice would have been effective if used in small doses, but to have 120 minutes of dizzying camera moves and cuts and out of focus shots just got in the way. It was downright irritating.

Reason two, the script. The screenplay, based on a book by John le Carre, does not take full advantage of the plot elements. The first problem is that the audience knows more than Fiennes for almost the entire film. Hitchcock uses this to great effect because the time between our having knowledge the main character does not is often brief. With this film, however, we wait a very long time for Fiennes to catch up. And, while you're waiting for Fiennes to figure out what you already know, you've spent that time figuring out what is going to happen after Fiennes knows... and that segues us into the biggest sin of the script, which is that we find out 99% of the secrets with about ½ hour to go in the movie… then almost nothing new is relayed. We’re just waiting for the film to end. There are no more surprises, nothing left in the tank. I'm like "end already!"

On a personal note, the screenwriter couldn’t help but slide in a heavy handed anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war message at the very beginning. Weisz and Fiennes meet at one of his lectures and she goes off on this diatribe against the war and how the U.S. and Great Britain ignored the U.N. and went to war anyway. That, alone, didn’t bother me. Everyone has a right to their opinion.

What did bother me was that Fiennes character was supposed to be a member of British politics and could have easily mentioned that the dissenting U.N. votes against the war did so, not because they were against the war, but because they were taking bribes from Sadam. Or he could have mentioned that an Iraqi General verified that all of the WMDs were moved into Syria prior to the war… Fiennes character could have said anything in defense of his government’s actions, but he doesn’t. And that just seemed like another one of Hollywood’s knives thrown into the backs of the majority of the country that supported the war.

To continue this off-topic tangent, if you ever watch Law and Order, they are very good about quickly mentioning both sides to a hot topic then pushing it aside to let the rest of the story unfold. Here, the screenwriter presented only one opinion... and an uninformed one at that. Maybe that was on purpose. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. It's possible.

In any event, the script, Weisz, editing and score are all up for Oscar consideration. Out of the four, I think the script is not due such an honor due to the underutilization of the excellent plot elements available to it.

With great films, you find yourself thinking about the movie long after it’s over, find new ways that it moved your or effected you. With The Constant Gardner, the more I thought about it, the more I disliked it. So I stopped thinking about it.

Too bad. It could have been great.