So I went to watch THe Constant Gardener today with CDMCC and Elizabeth. Movie depicted Africa and its story really beautifully. The movie was pretty good, but moved a bit slow and there really was no suspense overall, though it was supposed to be a “thriller”. Maybe the book did a better job. You could’ve pretty much guessed the entire movie within the 1st 30 minutes. The trailer basically tells you everything you need to know. SPOILERS! The movie begins with murder of the main character’s wife and the rest of the story is the husband trying to figure out what his wife did and why she was killed.
There was a major plot hole that we were arguing over after the movie. You may want to skip the following block if you don’t want to be spoiled. I found some reviewers of the book on Amazon.com and emailed them the following message:
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I noticed you read the Constant Gardener after seeing your review. I recently saw the movie, but there seems to be a major plot hole which I’m hoping you can help me answer.
How exactly were the pharmaceutical companies planning to make money? From the movie, it sounded like the companies did not want to spend more time and millions more dollars in research because they were expecting an outbreak of TB soon and research might take another 3 years which will cause them to lose their leading edge because other pharmaceutical companies were already developing TB medicine. So in order to cover the side effects, they were hiding bodies who died using their medicine. But if they were planning to introduce the medicine into European countries or even America, if people die from the side effects of using the medicine, you can be sure they’d be sue big time. Also, how were they planning to bypass the FDA and get the drug approved.
My friend argues that what they meant by research was that they didn’t want to start from scratch, but continue testing it on humans and refining it until its ready for mass distribution to the people who could pay for the pills.
Since you’ve read the book, I was wondering what your opinion on this is. Thanks!
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