The Constant Gardener

Having not been to the cinema for ages, we decided to go on Friday night to see the highly acclaimed The Constant Gardener directed by Fernando Meirelles who did City of God and with an heavyweight cast of Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz and Bill Nighy.

The film is set in Kenya where Justin Quayle (Fiennes) works as a diplomat and lives with his aid worker wife Tessa (Weisz). After Tessa is mysteriously murdered, and all hints point to a crime of passion by a doctor colleague of hers, Justin takes up her work and tries to find out the truth of what she was up to and why she was killed.

This is not as good as City of God, and whilst there is some spectacular scenery and crowd scenes, there is also a lot of juddery footage (not always connected to supposed home video), which gets quite annoying. Almost as annoying as Weisz's eyebrows. Admirable story, fabulous setting, but just not as moving and inspiring as other films.

7/10