Beyond Borders (2003)
I don’t want to say that Beyond Borders has an unworkable premise but I have no idea how you would make it successful - and I've seen the movie.
When Sarah Jordan (Angelina Jolie) witnesses Dr. Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) burst into a prim and proper socialite party to beg for humanitarian funding, she's moved to act. Although naïve and way out of her league, she leaves her job and sheltered life to join his cause. Amid the crisis, a romance between them blossoms.
I get it. This movie wants to be like Titanic in the sense that it wants to lure people in with the romance and once they’re firmly invested, get them with the real-life drama. Big mistake. What we have in the end is essentially a movie where two lovers are separated and doomed to never truly be together because of those pesky Ethiopians, Cambodians, and Chechnyans. If only they didn’t need humanitarian relief Sarah and Nick could just live together and be happy! You never get to know the people in need. You only get to know the mighty whiteys who come in and do their best to save the day. I approve of the intentions but that's not enough to make a good movie.
What Beyond Borders needed was to stick to a single location instead of bouncing all over the world. When we meet Nick, he's working in Africa. Things are tough there, but they somehow make it work. They leave and we assume someone managed to build homes, find food, that the mission was a “success”. Essentially, it becomes an infomercial you see on TV. You feel bad for sitting on your couch while other people are struggling… but it doesn’t paint the people who are starving as people. They’re props; wide-eyed, big-bellied skinny little children used to further a cause. It's emotional to see, but only because it would be impossible not to be heartbroken. You resent the picture for its use of cheap tactics and then it moves on to another similar scenario.
This is the definition of a soap opera drama. Though light as air, the romance hogs all of the screentime while bigger things happen in the background. Even if Sarah wasn’t married with children, you still wouldn’t want her and Nick to get together because you've seen it so many times. Mixing scenes of passionate romance with human rights violations and famine doesn’t exactly put you in the mood.
Everyone involved in the project had their hearts in the right place. It somewhat successfully makes you feel the horrors that humanitarians in the field of duty face. It also trivializes this suffering by never making the starving, oppressed, or brutalized people actual people. They’re just window dressing for a strained romance. This is the kind of melodrama that people will say is a great movie because it's "important" but it isn’t. Beyond Borders bullies you by throwing all of this guilt your way until you surrender and proclaim it to be a moving 5-star film, or take a stand and say "ENOUGH!". This is junk and at over 2 hours, way too long. (On DVD, August 17, 2015)
