The Constant Gardener (2005)

[UniverseSeven]

Based on the best-selling John le Carré novel and from the Academy Award-nominated director of "City of God."

www.theconstantgardener.com/


A tough "date" movie...
by richardcp721 (movies profile) Sep 1, 2005
15 of 24 people found this review helpful

This was a tremendous movie. A very powerful film that commanded our full emotional engagement. Be prepared for a perspective challenging experience. Quite frankly, we left the theater drained.

As a postscript, refer to FORTUNE (July 26. 2005) for a fascinating look at drug patient trials in developing countries.

[jonnygemini]

September 15, 2005 -- The Constant Gardener: A movie gets it right about Africa and international conspiracies to hurt and kill the innocent. The screen adaptation of John Le Carre's thriller, The Constant Gardener, gets two thumbs up from this veteran of covering Africa's victimization by multinational corporations, weapons smugglers, and the "misery industry." The movie's main plot is a scheme by a consortium of international pharmaceutical companies to use AIDS and tuberculosis-infected Africans as human guinea pigs: plying them with untested drugs with fatal side effects. The conspiracy is sanctioned by the highest levels of the British government, professional "do-gooder" aid organizations, and corrupt African government officials in Kenya and Zimbabwe. There is even a reference to a Mossad agent who is apparently involved in the conspiracy with a Kenyan government minister. The Constant Gardener finally tells the true story of what is happening in Africa.

As Americans continue to bury their dead from what has been a series of government sanctioned errors of commission and omission with the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it cannot be overstated that similar wanton indifference to and involvement in Africa's suffering has been the unofficial policy of the United States and Britain for decades. Africa's Holocaust has propelled the names Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Niger, Somalia, Zaire/Congo, and Angola to front pages around the world. The Constant Gardener reminds us that these actual human catastrophes were not born in Africa but crafted and engineered from corporate board rooms, private millionaire clubs, and government executive offices from Washington, DC and New York to London and Houston. John LeCarre's writings are not mere speculation, they are based on years of dealing with the significant movers and shakers in the world's official and unofficial intelligence networks. In other words, he knows what he's writing about.

For the neo-cons, Republican and Democrat, and their exploitative business friends, the victims, whether in Africa or Louisiana, are always the same

The incessant role of some international aid agencies and religious organizations in Africa's woes is The Constant Gardener's greatest exposé. It is something this editor personally witnessed in Rwanda after that nation's U.S. and British-triggered presidential assassinations in 1994 by the U.S.-Anglo client, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and the resulting (and expected) genocide. The Constant Gardener reminded me of what I saw in Rwanda and on which I reflected upon in my book, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999...

more at:
www.waynemadsenreport.com/