Cast: Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache, Teri Polo, Yorick van Wageningen, Noah Emmerich
Director: Martin Campbell
Producers: Dan Halsted, Lloyd Phillips
Screenplay: Caspian Tredwell-Owen
Cinematography: Phil Meheux
Music: James Horner
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Beyond Borders wants to be an epic love story set against a backdrop of famine, corruption, and brutality in so-called "third world" countries during the last two decades. What it ends up being is an unconvincing melodrama that seems more interested in pushing an agenda and preaching than in developing legitimate, compelling characters. Too frequently, Martin Campbell's movie seems more like a public service announcement or an infomercial for a famine relief company than a major motion picture. (I kept waiting for Sally Struthers to make her pitch.) There are ways to make people aware of the horrendous suffering undergone by human beings in parts of the world, but the inelegant approach utilized by Campbell and screenwriter Caspian Tredwell-Owen isn't one of them.
Sarah Jordan (Angelina Jolie) is newly married to a seemingly perfect husband, Henry Bauford (Linus Roache). She is living a comfortable life in England when her world is suddenly turned upside down by the arrival of relief worker Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) at an elegant dinner she is attending. Nick's purpose is to create a stir and make people aware of how desperately supplies are needed in Ethiopia. Seemingly inexplicably, Sarah responds, sinking $40,000 into food and medicine, which she accompanies to Africa to deliver to Nick. Sparks fly between the two of them. Five years pass before they meet again, this time in Cambodia. Nick has begun to smuggle arms for the CIA in order to be able to fund his relief efforts and Sarah now works for the U.N. She still lives with Henry, but her marriage has become a sham. Nick confesses that he loves Sarah, but cannot be with her because of the dangerous nature of his work. Their next meeting is six years further into the future, in Chechnya.
Campbell, who directed the adventures of James Bond in Goldeneye, uses a similar globe-hopping approach to this project, except that the trips are to much less tourist-friendly places. This is quite possibly the first movie to be set in Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Chechnya, with linking scenes in London. Needless to say, the sights aren't as pretty as in the Bond movie. Most of the time, we are treated to arid or snow-covered rocky vistas. There's a disturbing element in the first segment about a boy suffering from extreme malnutrition that will shock some viewers. (Campbell has been quick to point out in interviews that this was actually a healthy boy who was digitally enhanced to appear grossly emaciated.) Beyond Borders' locales are populated by two kinds of people: the disease-ridden, injured, starving masses and the bad guys with guns. About the only ways to differentiate between locales is through the differences in skin color and languages. To say that the movie employs stock characters is to understate the matter.
Neither of the main characters is well-developed or credible. Sarah and Nick are too obviously a writer's constructs, acting the way they do not because of some deeply rooted passion (either for their work or each other), but because they are required to do so to serve the script. Sarah's impulsive journey to Ethiopia isn't plausible, her love affair with Nick seems forced and unlikely, and Nick's reciprocation is even less believable. For a film like Beyond Borders to work, we have to care about the characters and their situations. By cloaking Sarah and Nick with so many layers of artificiality, the movie kills any chance that we will see them as more substantive than a writer's pawns. The acting by Clive Owen (often mentioned as a possible successor to Pierce Brosnan for the 007 role) is effective, and he succeeds in bringing a fierce energy and raw charisma to the part of Nick. He is not well-matched by Angelina Jolie, however, who has the mute button on. Jolie's work here is lackluster, and she spends nearly the entire picture pouting. Beyond Borders may be an attempt to balance her Tomb Raider work with something "serious," but Sarah could have used a little Lara Croft to bring her to life.
The film's heart is undoubtedly in the right place, but so what? Fine ideals don't mean much when they're couched in an inert, pointless storyline. Movies can be an effective way of presenting a message, but that's only the case when storytelling, not politically correct sermonizing, is the primary goal. Beyond Borders has occasional, short-lived sequences when it arrests the attention, but there aren't enough of them to raise this to a higher level than that of an underwritten, overwrought melodrama with a social conscience.
© 2003 James Berardinelli