the constant gardener

movie review: saw the constant gardener last night. what a terrific movie. i give it 4 stars out of 4. plot was energetic and exciting. the cinematography was original and well done. there were lots of scenes where the camera was intentionally bouncing around, or struggling to focus - all adds well to the tension. they also did some great things with the color. the opening murder scene in the desert has some interesting color effects. the setting was in kenya. lots shot in the slums. this film left me really struggling to piece together all the details. i even woke up in the middle of the night because i forgot one. also got me thinking - biopharm companies must really be moving their human testing to poor locales. there was a great quote in the movie, something like ' you can test lotions made of battery acid here if you pay the right folks off' - that's so sadly true in the third world. i'm ignorant of any american laws that prevent this from happening, but my sense is abuse exists in some form. i suppose weird drug testing happens even here. i had a friend who funded his entire graduate school by volunteering. he was particularly proud of a trial where his body was used for stress testing the impacts of mixing a cardiac arrest prevention drug with ibuprofen. they wanted to see how high the doses could go before significant side effects manifested themselves. he was excited because it paid 4 times more than the regular trial. he ended up going into a mild coma for a few minutes and walked out w/ 4K$. i shudder to think what the extreme poor would do for 4K$ in india, or africa.