By Woodrow J. Hinton

Ralph Fiennes is perfectly cast as a man out to honor his wife's death in director Fernando Meirelles' compelling thriller, The Constant Gardener.

Nothing at the cinemas is better than a small summertime movie that exceeds expectations and betters the blockbusters when it comes to generating excitement. The Constant Gardener, an adaptation of John le Carré's tale of a murder and cover-up in Kenya, is the thrilling follow-up from Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian director of the high-energy social drama City of God.

Great on all levels, The Constant Gardener is a sad, suspenseful and completely believable espionage thriller. It's also cold and cynical, bringing a boost to its murder mystery with a bleak view of the world.

Foreign office diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is the gardener of the title -- a buttoned-up, Eton-schooled diplomat stationed in Africa. Quayle pays more attention to his garden than to his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), who is investigating the pharmaceutical firm Three Bees for its unsafe testing of a new TB cure on unsuspecting Africans.

When Tessa and her presumed African lover are killed, Quayle must operate outside trusted government officials (Danny Huston) and the system for the first time in his life in an attempt to honor her death and continue her cause.

Fiennes, the quintessential British love interest from movie romances like The End of the Affair and The English Patient, has the perfect packaging to play an anguished bureaucrat: hushed speaking voice, an intelligent gaze, hesitant smile and a fit, chiseled body. Fiennes cloaks his anger and drive for revenge with perfect politeness. His intensity, while often hidden beneath the surface of his actions, makes Quayle more than just another stiff-upper-lip Brit.

Fiennes makes Quayle handsome but diffident and courteous to a fault. Once he gives up gardening to investigate his late wife's murder, he must test his memories and act on them post-haste.

Meirelles, one of world cinema's most exciting and inventive filmmakers, proves himself to be as skilled in English-language storytelling as he is in his native Portuguese. He makes the colors and sounds of Kenya, both what is beautiful and what is heartbreaking, as important as any of The Constant Gardener's lead characters.

The villain is intentionally obscure and sprawling: global pharmaceutics, multinationals and their dirty deeds in Africa. Like many le Carré thrillers, the British high commission also plays a shady role.

If there is a hero, even more so than the grieving Justin, it's the human rights aid industry, the people without the strength or resources to protect the African people they've sworn to protect.

Le Carré, as well known as any of the actors in the film, was born in 1931 and earned his international reputation with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. He is 74, but his stories pack the energy of someone a third his age. The themes in Constant Gardener are as relevant today as when le Carré's novel was first published in 2000.

The Constant Gardener shifts back and forth from past and present tense, and Meirelles uses the numerous flashbacks and dramatic pauses to create something challenging, yet completely coherent. Meirelles' challenge is to show what's happening in Justin's head and he rises to the task.

Of course, everything is easier when the cast is dead-on. Fiennes brings Quayle's memories alive with an emotional intensity more powerful than action heroics.

Weisz replaced actress Kate Winslet but leaves no doubt that her smoky good looks, stubborn personality and shrill, outspoken enthusiasm for her causes were well suited for martyr character Tessa. Weisz brings the passion that cements Tessa's marriage to Quayle as something true and worth fighting to protect.

Huston, smarmy darkness to Fiennes' coy lightness, makes the perfect government snake as Sandy Woodrow, a British diplomat who acts like a concerned friend to Quayle but has another agenda. He is slightly sinister, which makes him more dangerous.

There is a moral outrage at the heart of The Constant Gardener: an accusation against Western nations for failing to help Africa and, even worse, their exploitation of Africa's developing countries. Bullying and repression and criminal offenses are undertaken in the name of democracy and good business.

Third World poverty, corporate greed and political cynicism are bedmates in Kenyan corruption and a foreign embassy that's part of the lies and deception. Take-no-prisoners capitalism wins out in The Constant Gardener, but deep down Meirelles wants audiences to remain hopeful about the world.

Meirelles would have movie watchers believe that Quayle is proof of a possible change for the better, a man who makes an internal journey from unquestioning obedience to his country to an acceptance of a new morality.

The film's personal story is as rich as its social politics. Quayle is a dedicated follower of protocol who becomes a man who acts on his passions and intuitions. He travels to Europe on the hunt for his wife's murderer and relies on spy craft to help him complete his sorrowful task. The moral search is constant throughout the film.

It is worth remembering that le Carré ended his novel in a bleak manner with Quayle in the African bush on the trail of his wife's killers. Le Carré is about poetic injustice, but movies have a harder time with such utter bleakness. Meirelles' brave cinematic response to le Carré is: How can such a decision be bleak?

When a government yes man replaces blind loyalty to one's country with loyalty to oneself and one's family, it's a private accomplishment that inevitably will lead to greater triumphs of justice. Grade: A