NY Times trashes liberal NGO film

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, October 24, 2003
Treating a Troubled World With a Dose of Star Power
By ELVIS MITCHELL

Sitting through "Beyond Borders," a romantic action-melodrama that
follows a couple of glamorous movie stars as they tend to the needy in
trouble spots like Ethiopia, Cambodia and Chechnya, is like watching
someone try to dry his hands with sandpaper. No amount of misguided
effort is going to help.

It's an easy picture to ridicule. After a while, you almost feel as if
the stars are making fun of it. Or at least you wish Angelina Jolie,
with her radiant presence and Panavision lips, and Clive Owen, with his
brisk, existentialist cool, were smart enough to do so. After the "Lara
Croft: Tomb Raider" movies, with their globe-trotting superficiality and
numbing imbecility, Ms. Jolie must feel she owes her fans something
serious. Unfortunately, she is starring in a movie even more benumbed
and superficial, a liberal video game that demeans the very refugees it
tries to spotlight.

Her good-heartedness is probably the reason she chose to star in this
film, which opens today nationwide, about a shallow young woman, Sarah
Jordan, who is shaken out of her insular existence in 1984. That's when
the dashing Dr. Nick Callahan (Mr. Owen) invades the fund-raiser she is
attending with her new husband, Henry (Linus Roache). A band has slammed
through the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" The song's title
asks a spiritual question that will soon come to haunt not only Sarah
but also the audience.

Nick has the gall to parade a slender Ethiopian boy named Jojo (Keelan
Anthony) in front of the rich Londoners at the party just to get their
attention. Sarah is so moved by Nick's socially conscious performance
art that it doesn't occur to her how immensely self-serving his act is.
In fact, not one person remarks that this supposed hero is depriving the
child of dignity. Nick's act may not be racist, but it proves he is just
as callous as those who have anted up to drink Champagne for charity.
Hauled away by the police, Nick is sprung by the mysterious Steiger
(Yorick Van Wageningen, whose curdled cunning is one of the movie's few
high spots).

(clip)

It's probably fitting that one of the years that "Beyond Borders" covers
is 1989, roughly the era of "Cry Freedom," "A Dry White Season" and
other garish white-man's-burden films about third world misery. Sarah
and Nick shoulder all the pain of the world and barely have time for
themselves; isn't it awful? The director, Martin Campbell, an
accomplished action filmmaker, must have forgotten that in the 1940's
"Casablanca" had the good sense to have Rick note that the troubles of
two people don't amount to a hill of beans. "Beyond Borders" is
reminiscent of another 40's classic, the smashingly absurd "Duel in the
Sun," and is as realistic as another recent film based on actual
incidents, the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

full: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/movies/24BORD.html

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