Two Movies & The Treachery of Big Business

Ralph Fiennes (left) runs to the truth

Okay, so I'm a little slow, but I just got around to seeing "The Constant Gardener" last night. A great movie: Mindblowing, depressing, socially relevant. And an appropriate bookend to another movie, "Syriana."

Based on the John le Carré novel of the same name, "The Constant Gardener" (2005) focuses on a British Foreign Service officer (Ralph Fiennes), a widower who is determined to get to the bottom of an explosive secret involving the murder of his wife (Rachel Weisz), who has stumbled on a conspiracy involving a large biotech company that is intentionally killing people in Kenya with the acquiescence of bribed health officials in the service of testing and promoting a new drug.

The invisible hands behind the killers: Big business and corporate corruption.

"Syriana" (2005) is more complex and nuanced. Based on a book by former CIA agent Robert Baer, It concerns the disappearance of a U.S. missile in Iran, the heir (Alexander Siddig) to a Middle Eastern emirate giving a lucrative oil contract to China, thereby cutting out a major U.S. company, the major oil company merging with a smaller company and firing its Pakistani oil field workers, a Department of Justice investigation led by an eagle-eyed attorney (Jeffrey Wright) into the merged company headed by sharks (Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper and William C. Mitchell) for a multi-million dollar bribe in connection with an oil contract, an American economist (Matt Damon) parlaying the death of his son into a deal to advise the heir, whom the CIA wants dead, the fired Pakistanis joining a violent fundamentalist group and training for a suicide mission, a CIA agent (George Clooney) who is double crossed and tries to stop the heir's assassination . . .

The invisible hands behind the killers: Big business and corporate corruption.

Yes, pharmaceutical companies do much good. So do oil companies. (I guess.) Where the movies succeed so well is delivering the message that both industries have limitless power to influence global politics, as well as the ebb and flow of economies and financial markets.

And that there is an inherent treachery in their actions.