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Lack of explanation bogs down 'Beyond Borders'
Clive Owen and Angelina Jolie star in 'Beyond Borders'
Francois Duhamel/ Paramount Pictures
Director: Martin Campbell.
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache.
MPAA rating: R for language and war-related violence.
Every few scenes it lurches forward to another time and country, almost never suggesting how seismic changes occurred in between.
British doctor Nick Callahan (Clive Owen), who has been working among famished Ethiopians, crashes a London relief aid benefit in 1984, virulently chastising attendees for their hypocrisy.
He's removed by police but not before impressing Sarah Jordan (Angelina Jolie), the American socialite wife of a wealthy Brit, Henry Bauford (Linus Roache).
Taken with Nick's urgency, Sarah slips over to Ethiopia with a few supplies and grasps at once the abyss he ranted about -- the one that lies between a charity frolic back home and the realities of gravely malnourished children whose bodies are little more than breathing sticks.
For the next several years, Sarah divides her time between life in London with a dismayed husband, a family that magically grows between segments and her increasingly important role in the U.N., and her visits to Nick's relief camps in Third World countries such as Cambodia, hounded by the Khmer Rouge, and Chechnya.
It's never even somewhat clear how, when and why Nick disengages from the problems of one country and moves to another. Or what sustains Sarah's marriage besides propriety. The film flirts with the notion that she loves her children but hardly notices, yet barely conceals, how low they rank among her priorities.
Between Sarah's cavalier approach to motherhood and Nick's unnecessarily perilous lack of diplomacy, audiences are bound to be more than a little conflicted in their allegiances.
That's what makes Caspian Tredwell-Owen's screenplay confounding: its inclusion of elements, like Sarah's son and Nick's intemperate behavior, that neutralize empathy. It feels as though we're watching a true story in which the screenwriter was hamstrung by inconvenient historical realities.
It also feels as though transitions were lost in trimming the picture to 127 minutes.
But if the blueprint handicaps the final cut, "Beyond Borders" has many surprisingly potent moments played with great conviction by Jolie (as distracting as those pouty lips are), Teri Polo as her reporter-sister Charlotte, Jamie Bartlett as the Australian relief worker Joss and Noah Emmerich as Nick's buddy, Elliott.
It's good to see Jolie portray a heroine of infinitely greater consequence than her franchise super babe, the invulnerable Lara Croft.
Owen, though, scores most convincingly as the compulsively direct doctor.
The role of Nick was for some time to be played by Kevin Costner. Ralph Fiennes was the next choice. Catherine Zeta-Jones originally was to be Sarah, a part waved next at Meg Ryan. Oliver Stone was attached for a while to direct before Martin Campbell took over.
James Horner's subdued scoring, with an assist from Schumann's "Traumerei," complements Phil Meheux's gorgeous cinematography. "Beyond Borders" has an uncommonly lush professional luster.
Fans who recall Burt Kwouk as Cato, Clouseau's attack-dog servant in the Pink Panther series, might recognize him as a Cambodian colonel.
