Beyond Borders Release Date: October 24, 2003 Starring: Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Teri Polo, Noah Emmerich Directed by: Martin Campbell
PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 10/23/03)
Listen up class.
Clive Owen is speaking and glaring as he does it.
Not only that but he is speaking v-e-r-y slowly and v-e-r-y deliberately, which must mean that everything he is saying is v-e-r-y important, which tells us that the subject matter must be v-e-r-y important and in turn this film is v-e-r-y important. So you should pay attention.
Sara Jordan (Angelina Jolie), an American living in 1984 London, attends a swanky relief benefit to aid the starving people of North Africa. The black-tie event is crashed by the gruff Dr. Nick Callahan (Owen), a relief worker who has dedicated himself to saving the nation in question. Callahan chews out the guests for their wastefulness, pours a bottle of champagne on the floor, and feeds the starving child he brought in with him a discarded banana. This drives his point home. You can tell, because Sara sheds a single, life-altering tear and then decides to go to Africa to help his cause.
She spends the next 15 years traveling back and forth from London, where she's in a loveless marriage (which conveniently allows her to have a guilt-free affair with the good doctor) and works for the United Nations. Every few years she finds Callahan in one hellhole or another (Cambodia in 1989, Chechnya in 1995) and learns that helping people is dangerous business.
Jolie plays a naive young woman (epitomized by her all-white linen outfit when she arrives in Africa) who, by witnessing arms being smuggled in with medical supplies and government officials stealing food from their countrymen, matures into a worldly diplomat (who wears all black.) This pop nugget of McHistory, for all of its aspirations to sermonize, never elevates beyond a simplistic morality tale of, well, black and white. (Check out the nefarious CIA agent, introduced as if he were a vampire.)
Director Martin Campbell, whose earlier efforts at international relations include Goldeneye and The Mask of Zorro, seems most at home toward the end of the film, when stuff starts blowing up and Jolie gets to show off her Tomb Raider chops.
So, class, when it's all over and it's apparent that entire sections of the film are irrelevant and the paper-thin love story leaves you unsatisfied, hold your tongue, and try to remember that this film is v-e-r-y important.
