I saw the film of John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener at the London Film Festival last week. As a piece of film making it's first class, with wonderful cinematography and acting. But it's a truly dreadful film, just artfully dressed up agitprop. Le Carre's Cold War stories were terrific, but he has of late taken to spouting 1960s anti-West student drivel. The name Le Carre is now a warning, not a recommendation.

The Constant Gardener has the full kaboodle: capitalism is evil; the West exploits the rest of the world - worse, pharma companies kill Africans so they can make money in the West; governments and industry conspire to kill anyone who dares question 'the system'.

As one character in the film puts it: “Big pharmaceuticals are up there with arms dealers.” The similarity is not immediately apparent: one sells things which kill people in Africa, the other gives away the things it invents to make them healthy.

I was planning to write at length about the film, and the danger it poses by purporting to be an accurate representation of the truth about capitalism. I saw Ralph Fiennes on some talk show the other day, spouting bilge which could have come straight out of Mao or Stalin's mouth and being treated as a sage, when clearly he either has a well thought through revolutionary agenda or is simply an idiot who is good at pretending to be made up characters.

As I say, I was planning to write at length about but then I read Christina Odone in The Times, so I don't need to. She hits the nail bang on the head. I won't extract it - read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A correspondent has pointed out an aposite line from the great film, Team America, in which FAG (the Film Actors Guild) are the useful idiots in a world domination plot by Kim Jong-il.

Janeane Garofalo:

As actors, it is our responsibility to read the newspapers, and then say what we read on television like it's our own opinion.