Drivel is not a word I frequently use, but I will be generous in it’s application here. The word applies to the disappointing demagogic movie that stole two hours of my life, which I’ll never get back. “Constant Gardner” is a half-hearted attempt at leftist propaganda; you walk away with the feeling that they’re not even trying anymore. I expected a suspenseful, “gritty” (another word I don’t like), violent British drama, replete with interesting multifaceted characters… something like Layer Cake or The Lime or something by Guy Ritchie. Instead this was a tepid diatribe against the EEEEEVVVVVIIIILL pharmaceutical companies. Apparently the filmmakers are shocked – SHOCKED! – to discover that drug companies intend to turn a profit. The evil in question in the film is about a drug company that has the audacity to test a TB drug in Africa while daring to insist that Africans actually pay for name brand drugs for AIDS. Apparently the moral course of action is to test the drugs on Europeans, and then *give* them away to the Africans, who are all portrayed as inept and dying, or corrupt and greedy. The film never addresses who will actually create new drugs when the pharma company that does this goes out of business, but hey that’s someone else’s problem.
Besides being an unwitting example of a Randian “looter” philosophy put to film, Constant Gardner had the unintended consequence of reinforcing to me how horrid a place Africa is; apparently it is comprised exclusively (according to this film) of dying babies, AIDS-infested villagers, rampaging “tribesmen” (the film was made before the word Janjaweed joined our vocabulary), rich colonial oppressors replete with British accents and black servants, and all forms of gruesome death. While Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes give their usual excellent performances, their characters are shallow and one-dimensional and don’t do the actors justice.
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