The Constant Gardener (2005)

British diplomat and avid horticulturalist Justin Quayle is confronted by Amnesty International activist Tessa during a lecture in London. They strike up a romance, and marry after she accompanies him to his posting in Kenya. She befriends Belgian doctor Arnold Bluhm, leading to rumours of an affair. Tessa has no qualms confronting corruption, to the chagrin of Justin's superiors, and she loses a child late in pregnancy. Tessa and Arnold connect recent local deaths to drug trials being conducted by the Kenyan-based company Three Bees using the drug Dypraxa. They write a damaging report on the drug and Tessa gives it to Justin's colleague Sandy Woodrow, the British High Commissioner, who sends it to Sir Bernard Pellegrin, head of the Africa Desk at the Foreign Office. Pellegrin responds with an incriminating letter to Sandy, which Tessa persuades him to show her, and she steals it before departing for Lokichogio with Arnold. Sandy informs Justin that a white woman and black driver have been killed near Lake Turkana, and that Tessa and Arnold shared a room at Lodwar before hiring a car. Justin and Sandy identify Tessa's mutilated body, but Arnold's whereabouts remain unknown. Police confiscate Tessa's computer and files, but Justin finds her keepsake box, containing a letter from Sandy declaring his love for her and asking her to return Pellegrin's letter, and records of Three Bees' tests. After Tessa's burial, Justin learns from his colleague Ghita that Tessa kept Arnold's secret that he was gay, as homosexuality is illegal in Kenya. Pursuing the truth about his wife's murder, he follows the trail of her report. Justin is briefly detained by police and confronts Three Bees' CEO Kenny Curtiss, but receives no answers. Returning to London, Justin's passport is confiscated. He dines with Pellegrin, who lies that Arnold must have murdered Tessa, and believes that Justin has his incriminating letter. Justin meets with Tessa's cousin and lawyer Ham, and they access her computer files to reveal her investigation into Dypraxa and its manufacturer, Swiss-Canadian pharmaceutical conglomerate KDH, which hired Three Bees to test the drug on unsuspecting Kenyans as a treatment for tuberculosis. Justin receives a threatening note and Ham provides him with a fake passport to travel to Germany to meet with Tessa's contact Birgit. She is part of a pharmaceutical watchdog group and is reluctant to speak due to the targeting of her group. Justin is attacked in his hotel room and warned to stop investigating. Arnold's body is found having been tortured to death, while the announcement of a safe Dypraxa causes KDH's share price to soar. Returning to Kenya, Justin confronts Sandy, who admits that Tessa's report was silenced to save KDH from spending millions redeveloping the drug. Justin is approached by Curtiss, who has been betrayed by KDH, and brought to a mass grave of Dypraxa test subjects. Curtiss points Justin to Dr Lorbeer, Dypraxa's inventor, who has fled to Sudan. Tim Donohue, a friend in British intelligence, confirms that Pellegrin had Tessa and Arnold killed. Unable to convince Justin to return home, he gives him a gun. Justin travels to confront Lorbeer, who is treating remote villagers to atone for the lives claimed by his drug. The village is attacked by raiders, but Justin and Lorbeer escape in a UN aid plane, and Lorbeer reveals that he has Pellegrin's letter. Tessa convinced him to record the truth about Dypraxa, but he changed his mind, instead informing KDH that Tessa and Arnold were en route to expose the company to the UN. Justin convinces the pilot to mail Pellegrin's letter to Ham, and to drop him off at Lake Turkana. Removing the bullets from his gun, his final thoughts are of Tessa before he is killed by KDH's henchmen. In London at Tessa and Justin's memorial service, Pellegrin lies that Justin committed suicide in the same place his wife died. Ham announces the reading of an epistle, but instead reads Pellegrin's letter, exposing the deaths caused by Dypraxa and the subsequent coverup. Pellegrin storms out as Ham implicates the British government, KDH, and public complacency regarding the human cost of medicine they take for granted.