It seems curmudgeonly to criticize a movie made with the worthy intention of raising awareness about the plight of refugees in war-ravaged nations. But those intentions would have been better served by a compelling documentary rather than a far-fetched romantic adventure.
Angelina Jolie slums her way through Beyond Borders, a film that telegraphs its plot and then drags ploddingly, its humane spirit obscured by an inane script and Jolie's implausible character. The harrowingly realistic shots of famine victims are not enough to make this story believable.


Here's the gist: Privileged glamour girl becomes a humanitarian overnight, going to Ethiopia, Chechnya and Cambodia to help those wounded, starving and displaced by war. She puts her mouth where her money is, expressing dismay by pursing her bee-stung lips and looking stricken to approximate sadness and concern.

This is set in motion at a charity ball when a handsome doctor barges in. (Clive Owen's fiery intensity is a bit one-note, especially after his nuanced performances in Croupier and Gosford Park.) He interrupts a lavish affair to shock attendees into seeing the real face of poverty. The face belongs to a hauntingly gaunt Ethiopian boy. Moved, Sarah decides to donate her savings and time to famine relief.

While in Ethiopia, she leaps out of a moving truck and clutches a starving baby to her chest, shooing a vulture off the body of the baby's mother. It would have helped us to accept this glossy babe having a crisis of conscience if her stylish white pants and blouse had gotten even a speck of dust on them while she toiled in the Ethiopian desert. Her spanking white espadrilles make a stark contrast to the fly-ridden corpses covering the desert floor.



And while food and water are frighteningly scarce and deadly disease is rampant, somehow there exists a perfectly playable piano in the remote desert. As she tickles the ivories, Sarah wins over Nick, who had dismissed her as a silly dilettante.

Five years later, Sarah's marriage is floundering, but she has a young son and a good job at the United Nations. She leaves the comforts of home for Chechnya and the dashing doctor.

A few years later (oddly, her son hasn't aged), she's off to Cambodia. She and the good doctor are shot at by warring rebels, but they take the time amid the flying bullets to kiss passionately.

Much has been made of Jolie's own humanitarian conversion. She may have the courage of her convictions as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, but Beyond Borders does her a disservice by focusing on her glamour-girl persona rather than allowing her to show what she can accomplish in a serious role.