Constant Gardener, The MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +1 1/2 Content: -3

n this romantic thriller based on the best-selling John le Carre novel, British graduate student Tessa (Rachel Weisz) challenges diplomat and academic Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) about foreign policies while he’s giving a speech. He’s intrigued by her outspoken political views and attracted by her bold spirit. She, in turn, is drawn to his introspective nature. The two quickly move from the academic arena to intimate romance. Their affair turns into a marriage when Tessa asks to accompany him to a remote part of Northern Kenya. The unlikely pair agrees not to mix their relationship and their politics, so Justin is in the dark as his activist wife investigates a drug company’s questionable testing practices on African patients. But when his wife and good friend are brutally killed, this reserved man searches for the true reason she was killed and begins to dig up what appears to be a sinister cover-up.

Though this movie centers on the intrigue of two unjust murders, its true agenda is political. It uses a fictitious love story to protest America’s foreign policy in Africa. While seeking to awaken viewers to injustice, it assaults them with numerous sexual images and repeated, graphic violence. In a word, the movie is jarring. Its camera angles, images, language and message are deeply disturbing. When viewers are not seeing sexual images, they’re exposed to an onslaught of violent scenes depicting murder, killing and death. Though some of the violence accurately reflects the present-day Aids epidemic in Africa and the genocide in Sudan, it is often overwhelming and grotesque. While it succeeds in making the audience face the reality of a situation we’d rather ignore, the graphic means used to tell the story are too raw and the sexual content gratuitous, earning it a low acceptability rating.

Preview Reviewer: Suzanne Keffer
Distributor: Focus Features