neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Beyond Borders
	Martin Campbell Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache, Teri Polo, Yorick van Wageningen, Noah Emmerich 2003		Pompous, preachy and overstuffed, "Beyond Borders" is a long way to go for very little payoff. If you're craving genuine emotion or believable, tension-making action, try elsewhere. The star of "Beyond Borders" is lithe, pouty Angelina Jolie of "Lara Croft" fame. She plays Sarah Jordan, an American woman who marries an aristocratic Brit in the early 1980s, but it's no great match. After Sarah witnesses an angry appeal by relief worker/physician Nick Callahan (Clive Owen of "Croupier"), her conscience persuades her to finance and oversee a food and vaccine shipment to an Ethiopian refugee camp. There, Nick's unswerving devotion to the sick and destitute is on display as local warring factions threaten his patients' security. Nick moves his practice to other global hotspots (Cambodia, Chechnya); Sarah follows. The heat of their sexual attraction — undetectable to us — rises with danger. It's hard to tell whether director Martin Campbell ("Goldeneye") and the scripter planned to make a weepy romance-in-a-combat-zone such as "A Farewell to Arms" or a scathing indictment of the world's relief efforts. They succeed at neither. Random absurdity: Teri Polo, a blonde who looks nothing like exotic Jolie, was cast as Sarah's sister.