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Beyond Borders
(Reviewed October 25, 2003)
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Possibly the most well-meaning unintentionally silly movie of the year.
Angelina Jolie is a rich society babe who is enlightened to the world's suffering by a smoldering-eyed stud (Clive Owen) who doctors
the downtrodden. Jolie leaves her amazingly understanding husband behind for a brief flit to Africa, so she can personally escort a convoy of food and medicine (which she has bankrolled) to a refugee camp
where her love god has set up a struggling practice. The convoy is stopped briefly along the way by badass bandits with big guns, but apparently all of them either are quite gay or remarkably sensitive,
because the pneumatically breasted Jolie is left preposterously unmolested after the ugly encounter. We're supposed to believe that none of these trigger-happy desert outlaws would avail himself of an easy
opportunity to jump Lara Croft's bones? Please!
Back in the lap of London luxury later, Jolie can't stop thinking about Mr. Wonderful. She later jets to join the Fiercely Dedicated But Fatefully Compromised Physician in Cambodia and then in
Chechnya. It's all good looking and technically well made stuff (with some genuinely edge-of-the-seat scary bits, such as when a psychotically pissed-off Cambodian rebel leader and his nasty band give a
baby a live grenade to play with), but ultimately everything here is rather empty-headed and preposterous. Also, the ending is straight from the canned corn section of your local sloppy, sentimental
supermarket.
Jolie probably had her heart in the right place when she made the movie, considering that she now actually holds some sort of UN ambassador position. And the movie honestly does not come
across as a cynical exercise. If anything, the opposite is true: everyone involved may have been convinced that good intentions would a good movie make.
Still, my advice is to send your eight bucks directly to UNICEF, if you really give a damn about this movie's subject matter.
Resist the urge to go along in one of the relief trucks, though. You may not meet up with bandits who are as chaste and thoughtful as the ones who stopped Jolie.
Back Row Grade: D
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