KDH Pharmaceutical, THE CONSTANT GARDENER (2005)
This Fernando Meirelles film, based on the novel by John le Carre, announced that the time had come for Big Pharma to join the familiar ranks of oil companies, nuclear power consortiums, and computers programmed to rule the world in the rogue's gallery of villainous movie businesses. KDH, the chief baddie here, has been running unethical drug trials on poor Africans, cynically using the continent's defenseless population as its own guinea pig ranch, and employing a collection of goons to use torture and murder to cover up after itself. Even worse in the eyes of the audience, it has left Ralph Fiennes bereft and inconsolable in the face of the murder of his wife, a whistleblower played by Rachel Weisz. Luckily for the movie, Fiennes and Weisz have real chemistry here, so that when Fiennes loses her and goes into his lonely-guy-with-nothing-left-to-live-for routine, even people who think that government-funded health insurance for sick orphans is a Commie plot want to see the KDH Board of Directors roasted over a slow fire.
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