Review of "The Constant Gardener" (2005) 邦題「ナイロビの蜂」

I picked this up at Tsutaya in the Academy Awards corner that always gets set up this time of year. Rachel Weisz won best supporting actress for this in 2005 and somehow I had missed seeing it until now. The bland title (in both English and Japanese) may be to blame, or the cover photo with Ralph Fiennes who has never quite been a compelling must-see draw for me.

Not knowing what to expect, I stayed engaged watching the story unfold and appreciated the realistic no-winner ending.

The best part was the acting by Weisz, who plays Tess, a save-the-world activist who is murdered after uncovering a conspiracy by a major drug firm to use Kenyans to illegally trial a risky TB cure and trusting the British embassy to act on it. Awareness that free drug provisions to African countries by big pharmaceutical companies could be abused seemed to be a valuable message to send as well. The directing of the film by Fernando Meirelles seemed smooth enough to keep the drug company conspiracy and the romance of Tess and her diplomat husband played by Fiennes engaging to the end.

Regrettable was the lack of African actors/characters developed in major roles and a lopsided white-centric scenario of white heros (especially Fiennes the gardener diplomat, who is less than compelling) solving problems in Africa caused by white corporate and government greed with the African locals only shown in a peripheral, helpless assistant-to-the-whites sort of way. The D+ review by Schager on Filmcritic.com gave a good critique of that weakness of the film, an insightful balance against the overwhelmingly good reviews given by Ebert and many others.