BEYOND BORDERS: Two relief workers form a relationship amid the backdrop of charity work in third-world countries. Now playing at Circle Cinemas.
At heart, Beyond Borders has the best of intentions. It begins by looking like a wake-up call to an American public unaware of or indifferent to the plight of third-world refugees ravaged by famine and malnutrition, but it eventually topples into something less. In addition to a call for advocacy, Beyond Borders wants to be a romance, a drama, and an action piece, culminating in a hodgepodge narrative that upstages its seminal message of humanity.
Angelina Jolie plays Sarah Jordan, a London socialite and newlywed wife of Henry (Linus Roache). As the two carouse one night at a charity ball benefiting an Ethiopian refugee camp, the camp's director and chief doctor, Nick Callahan (Clive Owen), storms in parading a young, skeletal refugee to protest cut funding. Moved by Nick's story and the young boy's pain, Sarah decides to volunteer at the camp. Henry, because he is a largely ineffectual husband, thinks the idea is childish.
Sarah may not be so much of a child as she is a naïve idealist. She arrives in Ethiopia wearing white linen and perfume and insists on picking up the first sick child she sees. Nick is more calloused to reality, but he is eventually taken by Sarah's compassion. His world is more compromised, and Sarah cannot understand why Nick must run guns for the CIA to keep his camps functioning. When Sarah leaves, the two part knowing a possible romance has been unfulfilled.
Twice they meet over the next 11 years, first in Cambodia and then Chechnya. But with each meeting the movie shifts focus away from what works. The scenes in Africa are the movie's most effective and evoke the most sympathy from the viewer. Director Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, No Escape) gives an uncompromising portrait of African starvation through horrific images of emaciated bodies, both real and computer enhanced. Yet as the locale changes, the emphasis shifts from public service announcement to romance.
Because Campbell decides to emphasize the romance over the other elements of the story, he sacrifices his strongest element in favor of convention. Nick and Sarah's relationship is convincing enough, but too many scenes linger on Jolie's wide, sad eyes, and voluptuous lips.
Owen, known for his roles in Gosford Park and the BMW film series, walks with an existential flavor. Nick carries his brazen personality and vocationally instituted isolation as emotional baggage. Still, he is never cold enough to be untouched by Sarah's rendition of Schumann on piano or her sense of humanity.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Jolie was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2001 after a tour of third-world countries influenced by this film. Why then, if she has such a personal connection, are the refugees deemphasized in the last two scenes? The movie ends with a dedication to refugees and relief workers around the world, but by that time the audience has already forgotten about them.
Beyond Borders could have been better had it kept the focus of the refugees, but it doesn't, and any noble intentions have lost out to soap opera romance.
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