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BEYOND BORDERS
by Peter Sobczynski

October 24, 2003

1/2 (out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen. Directed by Martin Campbell. Starring Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Teri Polo, Linus Roache and Noah Emmerich.

"Beyond Borders" is one of those movies that takes an enormous tragedy and essentially reduces it to the level of a soap opera so that it can have a couple of big stars standing front-and-center swapping spit. This is an approach that, if done correctly, can make for a memorable experience (such as "Titanic") but if it doesn’t (remember "Pearl Harbor"), the results can seem incredibly tasteless and an insult to the memories of those who suffered during those actual events. It only takes a few minutes to realize that "Beyond Borders" is not going to be the great, rabble-rousing epic that it hopes to be but the real obscenity of the film is that it takes tragedies that are still going on today and turns them into background material for another crappy movie.

Angelina Jolie (whose string of post-Oscar disappointments continues) stars as Sarah Jordan, an American woman who has married into a rich, priggish British family (with a husband played by Linus Roache). We first see her in 1984 at a "charity ball"-one of those tacky shindigs in which it appears that more money was spent on the party than was raised in the first place-that is invaded by dashing relief worker Nick Callahan (Clive Owen), who has brought with him an army of press and a starving Ethiopian child. He makes a big speech expressing outrage that the same people willing to pay for such a party are the ones who have been cutting off his funding and condemning hundreds to death. Of course, no one is moved by this action but Sarah but director Martin Campbell is so eager that we get the point that only she understands the tragedy that he actually has someone throw a banana at the child-leading to an excruciating scene in which the kids gratefully chows down while Nick encourages him to act like a monkey for the crowd.

From there, the film turns into one of those long-running epics filled with exotic locales, human suffering, violence, heartbreak, simmering romance and kicky outfits favored by studios desperately searching for Oscar bait. Sarah decides to give up her privileged life and become a relief worker. First off, she sets off to Ethiopia with a shipment of food where her eyes are opened by the shocking poverty and sickness, her ears burn off from Nick’s never-ending insults about her being just another spoiled girl trying to feel better about herself and her whiter-than-white outfits never get a spot of dirt on them. Five years later, she is working for the U.N. and follows another relief package for Nick into Cambodia, where conflicts with the Khmer Rouge lead to a perilous jungle escape. Finally, in 1995, she gets word that Nick may be in trouble in Chechnya and sets off to rescue him with nothing but pluck, determination and the kind of fancy hat that Julie Christie would have killed for in "Dr. Zhivago".

In "Entertainment Weekly", Angelina Jolie was quoted as saying "We’re so afraid that people are going to see this as only a humanitarian war film. It’s also a very sexy love story that has a beating pulse. It’s not heavy or depressing." However, the subject of the film is heavy and depressing and if a film like "Beyond Borders" isn’t willing to face up to that fact from the get-go, perhaps it shouldn’t have been made in the first place. (Indeed, this film had a long gestation period-directors like Oliver Stone and stars like Kevin Costner flirted with it over the years-and I suspect that the cheese/tragedy ratio may have been a factor in why it never got off the ground.) As long as the film itself is strong, audiences can handle grim subject matter without tricking it up with a plot out of a bad romance novel. "The Pianist", for example, was one of the grimmest movies ever made but it still worked because people were caught up in the tragedy-not because it had a coating of schmaltz to make it go down easier.

What really hurts "Beyond Borders" is the fact that the schmaltz itself is so badly done. Do we really need, for example, the whole subplot about Sarah’s crumbling marriage or her affair with Nick (which boils down to one night in the sack, one speech by Owen that tries and fails to be like the "hill of beans" speech from "Casablanca" and a melodramatic last-minute revelation that is simply laughable)? Do we really need a Khmer Rouge soldier handing a live grenade to a small baby to underline that they are bad people? The most laughable bit, however, is the moment in the Ethiopian camp where Nick overhears Sarah playing Schumann on a piano and realizes that she really is a soulful person; I kept waiting for a moment in which he would have to justify the Steinway line-item to the people funding him.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Angelina Jolie (who works as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador in real life) in wanting to do a film that would call attention to the plight of those facing incredible catastrophe. I do question her sanity, though, in believing that this would be the perfect project to raise such awareness. If a film like this worked, audiences would be walking out feeling sadness, deep anger and an immediate urge to do something. Instead, I suspect that most people will emerge from the multiplex with no feeling other than the nagging sensation that they should have caught "Kill Bill" instead.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.