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.
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