Remembered that how fantastic his previous direction of City of God was, i told YaoMing that i wanted to catch The Constant Gardener in theatres, for free. (Cos the thriller arrives our shores terribly late. It opens in Malaysia in Dec last year, while it opens in Singapore a week after CNY, while the DVD hits the shelves of local home video shop three weeks before CNY.) But i didn't get the free tickets, cos there are no free screening going on, and it was made a limited release. (Yeah, why don't they just make it straight to video release, and skip that theatrical release?? Anyway, the VCD was released the very next day when the run comes to an end.)
Ralph Fiennes did not bring home a little golden man statue, but his co-star Rachel Weisz does. And it was real pathetic that The Constant Gardener receives only 4 nomination (and wins only 1 for Weisz for Best Supporting Actress. The other 3 was those tiny winny awards.) in the Oscars and 1 win, 2 nominations in Golden Globe. And very once again, we were brought to the rural areas of Africa. If you have watched City of God, you will know that Meirelles loves to discuss live in the developing countries, or the 3rd world country.
Fiennes is Justin, a British diplomat, who found out his wife, Tesse (Weisz), an activist, was found murdered with her partner, Arnold, a African doctor, while they are on their way to treat the AIDS patients. While it seems that Tesse had an affair with Arnold (while the fact is Arnold is gay) behind Justin's back, Justin investigates his wife's death, and he get more than he bargains for. He discovered a conspiracy behind a gigantic drug company that manufactures drugs to cure and prevents TB. However, they are out there to test the drugs on the Africans and if it succeeds, they will earn millions of dollars from it. If it fails, they just dispose the bodies in the wild, covered with quicklime to covered what they did.
No explosive actions, no flying of bullets around the place, no bloodshed, just peaceful finding of the truth (doubt it would be that peaceful afterall, when Fiennes was beaten up and receive a death threat in Germany.) to prevent millions of lives lost for nothing. It has been a long time since we last seen such films appearing in our theatres. However, it is not that appealing to all. (doubt anyone would enjoy a thriller that requires one to think, especially complex issues were thrown into it.) So, it explains why it is not doing that well in local box office, especially it opens in only 3 theatres.
But hey, know one thing?? The movie was filmed in Kenya, not S.Africa, since it could not get an approval to be shot in S.Africa. And better still, the cast and crew build a school for the locals and helped them with necessities to improve the lives of the poor. Something from what we learnt from school has applied in real life by Focus Features (The coy behind Constant Gardener.)
Sounds too good to be true to believe in??
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387131/