Judge Kozinski Reviews (Pans)
A Constant Gardener
Please note, there are some spoilers, so if you plan seeing the movie, no matter what, and want to be surprised . . . .Here's the intro to the review:
Well, it's going to be hard to be surprised by this movie, if you have the intelligence of a turnip, but if you don't want to know the ending and such stuff, don't read the comment.
I thought this movie would never end. The plot is a thinly disguised disinformation piece about how westerners, and particularly large drug companies, are taking advantage of Africans out of greed. No anti-western and anti-business cliché is omitted, and they are trotted out in a monotonously predictable fashion. Though the movie takes for-e-ver to plod through its torpid paces, there is no mystery here about how it will come out, or why. There are no plot twists, no startling denouements, nothing even mildly surprising. Endless camera shots--closeup and wide angle--of African poverty is supposed to give this movie higher meaning, but that motif has been done so much more effectively--and realistically--in other movies, like Hotel Rwanda, where the suffering is palpable. Here it is just a vehicle for carrying the movie's anti-western message.
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