Anyone familiar with Angelina Jolie's concern for refugees is going to know that Beyond Borders was a project close and dear to her heart. Unfortunately, all the best intentions in the world aren't enough to save this two-hour long message.
Jolie plays an American in high-society London who gets shocked out of her pampered shell by Clive Owen, a humanitarian relief doctor who crashes a charity ball she is attending. Think Indiana Jones meets Doctors Without Borders and you'll get the general idea of Owen's role.
Before you can say, "Pass the UNICEF box," Jolie is in deepest, driest Ethiopia at the height of the mid-80s famine. Somehow managing to keep her all-white outfit spotless while rescuing a starving child from a vulture, Jolie meets up with Owen at a refugee camp and the requisite sparks fly.
Their romance stretches over a decade as Owen moves from one trouble spot to another, presumably in search of the next humanitarian challenge. Jolie also dedicates her life to saving the world, and despite a bothersome marriage and family, manages keeps her long-distance affair alive.
The film travels from Ethiopia to Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia, then to rebellious Chechnya. Jolie always finds a baby to hold, Owen always finds some flattering lighting, and they both gnash their teeth that man's inhumanity to man must keep them apart.
Thrown in the mix is Noah Emmerich, who does a wonderful and understated job as Owen's friend, co-humanitarian and head to Owen's heart. The shadow to Emmerich's light is played by Yorick van Wageningen, an arms dealer who coaxes Owen into making a Faustian deal in exchange for continued funding.
The movie also stars Teri Polo as Jolie's improbable newscaster sister and Linus Roache as Jolie's British husband. Both are treated as throwaway characters, only existing to further the plot along.
The romance between Jolie and Owen never rings true. They exchange pouts and stares but when the time comes for them to consumate their love, they look like they are blindly going through the moves. Part of the problem is we are expected to believe that two adults who are mature enough to be selfless and devote their lives to a higher good would still behave like giddy teenagers and fall in love at first sight.
In fact, the scenes with Jolie and Emmerich were far more interesting and full of sexual tension. So much so that I was disappointed when it became apparent that Jolie's character was fated to follow a different path.
The scenes of disaster, on the other hand, are almost all strong and moving. The early visions of famine-devastated Africa haunt the remainder of the film, especially the unnerving knowledge that these are not CGI-created victims but actual living, breathing skeletons. But by the time we get to Chechnya, we are experiencing the very "compassion-fatigue" that Emmerich cites as reason for their dried-up funding. Perhaps, sensibly, this is the reason that director Martin Campbell keeps the footage of suffering Chechnyans short, shifting the focus to the rebels and Owen's never fully explained kidnapping.
(Would you think you could get a good ransom for a no-name doctor working in the name of charity? Nope, me neither.)
The story is well-paced enough, with each segment neatly contained. Especially dramatic is a scene involving a child and a grenade. The cinematography is of the same yeoman-like quality, with Ethiopia awash in umber and ocher, Cambodia vibrant with jungle green, and Chechnya colored over in glacier-blue. At times, though, the magnificent landscapes overshadow the drama, making the plights of the charity workers and their wards briefly insignificant.
Press materials state that Jolie's work with the United Nations, and her adoption of a Cambodian child, were inspired at least in part by reading the Beyond Borders script. If true, then author Caspian Tredwell-Owen is to be congratulated. Far be it from me to deter anyone in as fortunate a position as Jolie to give time to noble works. But Campbell fails in trying to combine a love story with a tale of disaster-relief. The result is a movie that does both a disservice.
If Tredwell-Owen and Campbell had kept the film, and the story, set in the Ethiopian camp, they might have been better able to achieve the balance between romance and relief. Instead, Beyond Borders is a Travel Channel special sponsored by Oxfam.