Movie: The Constant Gardener Director: Fernardo Meirelles Screenplay: Jeffrey Caine (based on a book by John le Carre) Time: 129 minutes Thoughts: I borrowed this movie last week from our local library, expecting it to be a movie that I would watch alone, because I didn’t think my wife would be interested in it. However, we both watched it together and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I have read le Carre books previously, but mostly his “older” books, “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold” and the like, nothing recent. I remember them as slow, plodding books with not a lot of action, so I was pleasantly surprised that this movie wasn’t slow and plodding, but fairly suspenseful and full of intrigue, if not a lot of action, except toward the end. In short, superficially the movie was about a British diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) investigating the murder of his wife (Rachel Weisz) in Kenya who was investigating pharmaceutical companies faking drug trials, but on another level, the movie was about the love between him and his wife. Both Fiennes and Weisz are good, but Pete Postlethwaite and Danny Huston, son of John Huston and half-brother to Anjelica Huston, give excellent supporting performances and the documentary style of filming by director Meirelles, who directed “City of God,” put this one on the must-see list.
