By Dennis Harvey

SATAN BLESS PAT Robertson, who can be counted on at regular intervals to say exactly what the far right is usually smart enough to avoid voicing out loud. Robertson's latest insertion of holy foot into cavernous mouth had him urging US leaders to take out the Venezuelan president for sassing us so. Whether or not our visionary leadership ultimately does arrange an early date with damnation for Hugo Chavez, the incident again points out an essential, ever-spiraling inequality in American public life. Why does it take a freaking catastrophe of Robertson proportions to actually embarrass the conservatives, while the slightest little contrarianism (say, a grieving military mother or B-list Hollywood name critiquing White House policy) can unleash the hate brigade on liberals?

In the current climate, it's startling, and refreshing, to come across a popular voice that gets away with subversive truth-telling (which I'll loosely define as any truth accompanied by "stupid" facts) without being accused of Benedict Arnold-dom. One such rarity is 75-year-old John le Carré, who may not be American, but who is read by many Americans who wouldn't suffer to pick up an Al Franken tome, let alone one by Noam Chomsky. Not that le Carré is an ideologue of any particular stripe or loyalty: His fictive yet fearsomely fact-inspired, cog-in-the-machine novels find amorality and villainy crossing all party, diplomatic, class, and racial lines.

Still, the way in which le Carré's protagonists end up crushed between impenetrable bureaucracy and the criminality beneath tends to condemn the same things that pesky Amnesty International does. He's covered Gulf War-related arms smuggling (The Night Manager), the rigging of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Absolute Friends), and the undermining of Palestinian resistance (The Little Drummer Girl). Particularly since the end of the cold war that fueled his first three decades' writing, le Carré has explored the intricate ties between espionage, official policy, variably legal capitalism, the new colonialism – otherwise known as global economics – and the US imperialism that controls all. His novels are such expert, high-end pop entertainment that most readers barely notice they are getting schooled.

With Ralph Fiennes as its star, rather than, say, Tom Hanks (try to imagine that English accent – ugh), the film version of le Carré's 2000 novel, The Constant Gardener, isn't likely to be as popular an entertainment. Which is everybody's loss: This is a very good movie almost any post-teenage viewer could enjoy, and within its classic framework of life-love lost and avenged, excellent points are made about how the world really works. Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a British civil servant posted to Kenya, where he upholds the standard of international diplomacy by maintaining a polite smile, turning a blind eye, and privately wishing one could do something for these people.

Storming into his quiet life with placards afire is Tessa (Rachel Weisz), the kind of borderline obnoxious but indomitable child-of-bourgeois-liberal-activist who actually does get things done. Their improbable marriage brings incalculable bliss for him, but also considerable embarrassment, as Tessa's high principles make her a troublesome diplomatic wife. We know from very early on that she ends up raped, murdered, and burned in an ambush on a rural road, presumably for pushing her activist sleuthing – about a multinational pharmaceutical company's AIDS profiteering – to the brink of international incident. The Constant Gardener charts Justin's attempts to find out who ordered her death and why, intercutting that quest with flashbacks to their relationship.

Fernando Meirelles made a deservedly big splash with 2002's City of God, a movie whose flash and energy led many to assume he was a new director, when, in fact, he's a 51-year-old veteran of Brazilian TV and several features. So it shouldn't be quite so surprising that his English-language debut is a thoroughly accomplished work that manages old-school plot intrigue, conventional romance, globe-trotting location work, and a heavyweight cast (Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, Danny Huston) with ease. His only half-error is overindulging the modish use of jerky-cam – that spastic handheld camerawork that is supposed to signal documentary-type immediacy, or something, and which will soon look as dated as circa-1970 zoom lensing. But in the end even that stylistic decision works well enough, allowing Meirelles to maintain a sense of surface urgency as the story's core draws toward grief and melancholy.

Weisz is perfect; she plays the part not as a saintly comet but as the same obstinate fount of tactless good intentions you might meet on any campus, or anywhere else progressive action is still considered more virtue than aberration. Tessa's flaws, which only heighten her heroism, awe Justin – he can't believe his luck in bagging such a live wire. It's Fiennes's movie, though, and while that may make Constant Gardener more an art-house hit than a multiplex one, the casting also lifts it from fine craftsmanship to fine art. This recessive, lyrically pained performance rates alongside his best (Spider, The End of the Affair, Schindler's List), and as such is a real thing of beauty. The hurt in his eyes as it becomes clear his wife died for pharma-corporate billions makes the political vividly personal, as it should be.

'The Constant Gardener' opens Wed./31 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.