Bamako doesn't correct the injustices committed by The Constant Gardener, reversing them by flaunting an all-brain-no-heart attitude. Writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako pays more than lip service to the precarious relationship between Africa and the West, but this harangue against Bush-era corporate interests (IMF, World Bank, and G8 are among the villains name-checked), though sincere and free of the romance-novel clichés that made Fernando Meirelles's picturesque slumming through Nairobi so appealing to Western audiences, is an unfortunate slog, dubiously pitched and aestheticized. Much of the action here revolves around a trial that pits the people of Bamako—a town in Mali's Hamdallaye neighborhood-against lawyers from the monopolizing World Bank. Many witnesses will give angry speeches in the courtyard where the trial is conducted, and they will do so with such conviction that some might confuse these scenes for legit documentary footage, even though Sissako's scarcely-verité direction suggests there's something tragically amiss with the film.   Ed Gonzalez