Good intentions or not Beyond Borders fails on every level. From a story that bobs and weaves itself into an inconceivable mess by the end of the movie to acting that has as little passion as possible.
Meant to be a romantic thriller Beyond Borders gets lost in its secondary story, which is how our two main characters meet. Angelina Jolie plays Sarah Jordan, a sheltered American socialite living in London.
Sarah is attending a charity event that is eventually crashed by Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) a renegade doctor that manages to use the word “fuck” in just about every sentence, and his commitment to humanitarian efforts in war-torn nations moves her deeply. Oh yeah, Sarah is married, but her husband is just as inconsequential to the storyline as is the thought of logic.
Sarah’s passion for Nick drives her to embark to meet him in the first of several visits to a desolate region of the world where people are being eaten by vultures and operated on without anesthetic.
The emotionally driven scenes in Beyond Borders are so obvious and expected that the entire movie is a cliche that failed to move me in any way.
Angelina Jolie’s stock may have risen, but her movie choices are downers, i.e. Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, and her co-actor in Beyond Borders, Clive Owen is just about devoid of passion and feeling as his character saunters in and out of predicaments married to curse words as if they would help the situation.
Beyond Borders seems like a production that was put together in a matter of hours, and time spent putting it together was at a minimal. Don’t expect much if you are forced to watch this one as it carries very little entertainment value whatsoever.
