BEYOND BORDERS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: foul language, sexual content, adultery

Rated:

While extremely thought provoking, Beyond Borders is not everything it pretends to be. It's not a great romance, or a fantastic adventure, or even a rock-solid case against world hunger. It's a hodgepodge of various things with a reasonable conclusion but some poor character development. Sarah (Angelina Jolie) has just gotten married to a wealthy English aristocrat (Linus Roache). While at a fundraiser for world hunger, she is struck by the angry plea of Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) for starving kids around the world. Showing off a little African boy who is so thin his ribs show through his skin, he rages against the well-intended organizations that send less than half their total profit to help various charities throughout the world. He is mocked by the attendees but Sarah is touched. Emptying out her bank account, she goes to Africa to be of use.

There she finds rampant starvation and despair. The local compound houses hundreds of people on the brink of death. Parents drop dead in the desert sands. Children are nothing but skin and bones. Nick has grown calloused, believing it better to let people die than take extra work nursing them back to life. The two immediately are at odds, quarreling over the survival of a child she picked up along the road. Unwilling to let the boy perish, Sarah remains constantly at his bedside but isn't removed enough to observe the political problems involved. Governments promise to help but then never deliver. The thousand pounds of food she brought should last them two or three days, at which point the natives will become enraged and endanger the staff. Eventually she and Nick become compatible, just when it's time for her to return to London.

Years later, facing a bad marriage and a time-consuming job at the United Nations, Sarah once more journeys into the life of Nick Callahan. Their friendship grows into something more but at the risk of jeopardizing their families, lives, and work, they choose not to pursue romance. Sarah is ultimately called to come to his rescue when he's kidnapped by refugees abroad. The plot is very diverse and interesting but would have worked better covering less ground. Time passes so swiftly we're lost on why these two characters love one another. Lust seems to be at the foundation of it, for no one could fall in love over a course of a fortnight and then hold onto that attraction for ten years, despite never seeing the other person again. It doesn't have enough time for good character development and just when our heartstrings are tugged, switches gears... and changes continents. Just about the time we're appalled with rampant starvation in the Sudan and ready to get out our checkbooks and log onto World Hunger, Sarah goes home.

About the time we're shocked with turmoil in Vietnam, once again Sarah goes home. It loses its momentum and leaves us hoping the ending will come soon. Pushing two-plus hours, Beyond Borders isn't sure what it wants to be. It's entertaining but holds little of substance. The acting is very good all around, and the cinematography is lovely. Sadly enough, it contains completely foul language and implications of adultery. The f-word peppers much of Nick's dialogue, and Sarah isn't above using it in a pathological rage. I lost count around thirty. There are also several harsh abuses of deity and general profanities and obscenities. Violence isn't really that big of an issue, but there is some gore involved in the operating room. A baby is given a grenade to play with in a threatened village; the man who saves him is shot and killed, others have their throats cut, and a soldier repeatedly beats and kicks Nick. Sarah continues the tradition to save his life, indicating her worst insult is to spit on him, which the officer copycats.

The most difficult thing to watch is starvation... children whose skin is so sallow you can almost see through it. Ten year old boys who weigh about twenty pounds. Rotting corpses along the road, gory wounds infected with buzzing flies. There's also a brief scene of adulterous sexual content (passionate kissing involved, but no apparent nudity). Sarah and Nick spend one night together in the jungle wilds, and she justifies it because of the indication that her husband may be seeing someone else. Their marriage is held together merely for the children, with no love or respect involved. It's really too bad because the movie wants to have heart and say something. Instead it offers us a mediocre and unbelievable romance laced with vulgar language and disappointing plot twists. Save your rental money and send it to World Vision instead.