Maybe there’s something wrong with me — but I found this movie boring, predictable, uninteresting and, frankly, obnoxious. How about having one interesting African character with a speaking part if, you know, this is supposed to be a movie about suffering Africans? (There is one, yes, but he dies in the first reel – and I don’t think he does anything but smile at the nice white lady.) And it is cut ridiculously. Poor Ralph Fiennes is trying to give a decent, restrained performance and this idiot Meirelles is swinging his camera around like it’s on a tetherball court. And the “location footage” isn’t all that inspired. Anyone can hand-hold with a wide angle lens and boost the color saturation in post. If you cut quickly enough no one will bother to realize the framing is all for shit. The story (which could be told in about 5 minutes without the unneeded flashbacks) is all vague liberal mush with no specificity about it. You wanna get worked up over pharmaceutical companies, fine, go grab a copy of “The Nation” and learn facts. This movie is too incompetent to get any real message across and, as such, it is about as illuminating as spending two hours with an incoherent conspiracy nut. I swear if I see one more movie where the multinational corporate conglomerate is the root of all evil I’m liable to become a pro-business conservative. Bad bad bad. (And the little tacked on inter-tribal raid, coming completely out of the blue, just to raise your blood pressure at the end and see children get shot: diabolical.) Mindblowing to think this is the same director who made “City of God.” If it weren’t for Fiennes, who is a very intruiging actor even in a piece of crap like this, this’d be a flat-out “F.”
