The box packaging of the movie gives away a long known bias of the continent of Africa: it's a shithole filled with disease. Decent movie, nothing to scare away the girl if she doesn't mind the poverty. A word of caution though, if your girlfriend actually has a brain she might think it's ok to cheat if it's for exposing some unethical drug trials that may prevent thousands of unsuspecting victims from dying. Is it worth your money? depends if you want to watch the movie with a girl and she might think you have a heart, sure. But going solo with this movie, you'll want a refund. 13 out of 25
The director tries to balance the negative scenes of children playing with raw sewage and nakedness with scenes of African landscape that begs the question "who approved the film?" Fernando Meirelles makes some interesting scenes and some parts are surpising, but surprisingly some scenes lack the intensity I would expect in real situations. Some parts of the film lag, and what I mean by this is that the film doesn't come together that well. It's consistent in the plot, but its murky when details try to show up and the cast can't seem to express the frustrations a normal person would have if they were involved in the plot. Not a movie that will charge your gf's batteries but still well made.
Ralph Fiennes, plays a strong part in the early portion of the movie, but that image of a somewhat geeky professor fades away and as he is faced by momentual challenges throughout the moive. Hard to say what kind of score he deserves. He didn't kick some ass so thats a downer. He does try to avenge his wife's death (but finishes wimply) which is a cool way to make enemies.
Initially, Rachel Weisz comes out in the early stages of the movie as a hottie but that quickly fades away as she becomes exposed as a liberal, cheating, irrational woman. That's a major turnoff. Sorry babe, you know risking your family's life to expose a pharma from using Africa as petri dish isn't all what its cracked up to be. She makes up slightly by being naked in the movie.
Frankly, the testerone level of this critic never got pumping until he saw that the main character just stood there in front of the bastard that screwed his wife. Come on, save the vengence crap for later. As an old friend, he deserves a good punch in the face. He lets the African mafia shoot him up even though he has a chance to get out of it (ok yeah a 9mm against 3 semi-autos would be challenging). If you're about to be killed you don't hallucinate that your wife is ready for you in heaven and give up on avenging her death. The sequence where the village is raided by some guys on horses with guns is a little exciting in the aspect that there's danger lurking, but a major turnoff that we find is they don't have any weapons to fight back with. Apparently, the UN expects them to kill invaders with sticks. There was a suspicion that one particular fellow was screwing the wife, but he turned out to be gay. Should've just told him before they died, I'd rather know if he was gay or not if I was suspicious.
There's a good amount of originality in here, but it doesn't mesh that well together. That's probably the fault of the director and pressure from producers. It takes a damn long time to develop the plot. Good thing I sold my pharma stock, otherwise it would've been sold this morning. This movie follows the known bias of Africa being a shithole. Apparently it still is and probably will be for a long time. Give 'em condoms ya morons.
