 November
2005
This month's reviews:
Two Current Thrillers -- two movies definitely worth your time
and money are The Constant Gardener and Flight Plan.
The Constant Gardener
Regarding the first, consider this passage from Genesis (4:8-9):
…Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said
to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Scripture makes it clear we are to be our brothers’ keepers, and
that’s the theme of The Constant Gardener. It stars Ralph Fiennes as
Justin, a toe-the-party-line British diplomat; and Rachel Weisz as
Tessa, his political activist wife who is out to expose British and
U.S. government corruption and especially the practices of big
pharmaceutical companies. When Justin is sent to Kenya on a
diplomatic mission, Tessa accompanies him and, unbeknownst to
Justin, becomes involved in a secret crusade against a conglomerate
using African people as guinea pigs to test its new TB drug.
Justin is always puttering around in his garden, but Tessa is the
real gardener who constantly tries to pull out the weeds of
corruption everywhere. Justin at first represents a kind of Everyman
who passively sympathizes with the plight of those in need but says,
“We can’t involve ourselves in their lives, Tess. There are millions
of people. They all need help.” Tessa responds, “But we can help
these two people!” Tessa is fearless in her attempts to expose evil,
actions which unfortunately lead to her death. As Justin tries to
discover who killed her, he changes and becomes committed to helping
his fellow humans.
Plusses:
- A great spiritual message designed to make us look beneath the
surface of things.
- Excellent acting.
- Powerful camera work and beautiful scenes of Africa.
Minuses:
- Language—a number of four-letter words.
- Gratuitous, unnecessary sexual scenes of Justin and Tessa
before they marry. These should have been “weeded out.”
- One-sidedness—While the movie makes us think, it can be
criticized for presenting issues in a too-black-and-white fashion.
Bottom Line: The Constant Gardener is about something
significant and worthwhile. Like Hotel Rwanda, it moves us to be
active in our Christian walk.
Rating: 3 ¼
stars
Not for children or younger teenagers
Flight Plan
In Flight Plan, Jodie Foster stars as Kyle Pratt, an engineer who
has been working in Germany and has just been widowed. Kyle is
taking her daughter back to the U.S., with her husband’s body in a
casket in the hold. Shortly after they board the plane, the
exhausted Kyle and her daughter fall asleep. When Kyle wakes up, her
daughter is gone. Kyle initiates a search that becomes more and more
frantic when the daughter cannot be located anywhere on the
aircraft. The flight crew, in fact, assert to Kyle that there is no
record of her daughter ever having been on the flight, and a
therapist passenger is called to console Kyle in her grief.
So here
is the big mystery: Did the daughter get on the plane? Does she even
exist? Was she kidnapped by the group of Arabs who are on board? If
not, is Kyle experiencing grief-induced delusions?
Plusses:
- A riveting screenplay, unique in that almost the entire action of
the movie takes place on the plane and not through flashbacks.
- Acting: Excellent performances by Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard
as an air marshal.
- Theme: It’s hard to beat the intensity of a parent’s love.
Minuses:
- Language: There are a few uses of taking the Lord’s name in vain.
- Screenplay: Some have criticized the script as being full of
holes. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Bottom line: Worth your time and money.
Rating: 2 ¾
stars
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Index of movie
reviews...
(2003 reviews through present)
Jay Maurer, a member of West Side Presbyterian Church, is
a long-term movie buff and former college teacher of The Film as
Literature. He has written movie reviews for The Good News
(West Side newsletter) since 2002.
If you have comments or questions
about the movie (or play) reviews, please contact Jay at
dramachap@msn.com.
Ratings are expressed in
increments of ¼ star.
A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is meant to be a recommendation.
1 star: poor
2 stars: minimally satisfactory
3 stars: quite good
4 stars: superb
Criteria for determining the ratings:
- Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values,
including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence
- Quality of the acting
- Originality
- Unity of the entire picture
- Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight
Other Christian movie review Web sites:
Plugged In Online
ChristianityTodayMovies.com
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