Director Fernando Meirelles, best known for “City of God,” masterfully pulls love, deception, conspiracy and murder in and around each other in his new film “The Constant Gardener.”

Based on the novel by John Le Carré, Meirelles takes the audience on a suspenseful journey into the African plains devastated by disease and poverty.

Justin Quayle, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a British diplomat who, after a whirlwind romance, heads to Africa with his new wife Tessa, played by Rachel Weisz.

Once in Africa, she becomes engulfed in the health crisis ravaging the continent in the wake of AIDS, tuberculosis and inadequate health care. Her intrigue pulls her deep into a drug company’s conspiracy involving an experimental breakthrough medicine and its deadly side effects, leading to her untimely demise as part of the cover-up.

After his wife’s brutal murder, Quayle returns to Africa to pick up his wife’s investigation. The rest of the movie follows him through flashbacks and into his wife’s past as he works to finish what she started. Much like the novel, “The Constant Gardener” artfully, although more intensely, circles its stories around the conspiracy to come to a fluid ending.

Every time another piece of information is revealed, the plot is taken deeper into the past. Every time one question is answered, another is immediately posed that drives the story further. The conspiracy forms the mystery behind Tessa’s death, but suspense is fueled by the characters’ personal lives.

If there is one problem with “The Constant Gardener,” it doesn’t lie in the characters or Meirelles’ masterful storytelling.

The most distracting part of the movie is the jerky cinematography. Although it is meant to add to the suspense, at times it merely detracts from the plot. It causes disorientation among the swirling mystery and disrupts the continuity of the film.

“The Constant Gardener” is really a bunch of fragmented stories that are fractions of one elaborate masterpiece. It could fall apart, but instead it pulls the parts together into a thrilling suspense story.

In the usual weed patch of fall movies, “The Constant Gardener” blooms as an award-worthy film, planting its activist message beside its grounded story of love and humanity in the garden of life.

REVIEW: 4/5

“The Constant Gardener”

Focus Features

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston

Length: 129 minutes

MPAA Rating: R for language, some violent images and sexual content/nudity