tvordlj | Beyond Borders

My friend Carole and i went to see this movie this afternoon. Clive Owen is in it. :) Anyway we expected a trumped up romance novel come to screen but it didn't matter. That's not what we got. It was a love story of course, but it was also grim and disturbing, a look at parts of the world we're lucky not to have to live in. Starvation, terror, land mines, war. My friend wondered if one starving child was real or if he was computer generated. She thought it was kind of exploitive if these were real people suffering for the camera. I don't know if some of them were real or actors but i suppose either way it's still exploitive. The concept is similar to the Doctors Without Borders and other UN Relief groups that are established around the world, the conditions they face, the struggle to keep going when there is no money, the compromises.

We ended up liking it more than we thought in spite of all this. At least it wasn't a drippy romance. The romance that was in it, between Clive Owen and Angelina "Lips" Jolie was quickly ignited and seemed a bit forced for two people who had only seen each other three times in 12 years. The scenery was brutal, from the bleak bleached out deserts of Ethiopia (filmed in Namibia), the sweaty wet and hot jungles of Cambodia (Thailand) and the frozen cold war torn Chechnya (Eastern Canada). London was represented by Montreal. Clive is impossibly good looking (seems kind of wrong drooling over him in the wake of such misery but there you have it). Angelina is as exotic looking as ever, not a drop of sweat, a few artfully placed smudges now and then, perfect disaster-chic wardrobe.

It might not have been that believable, it might have been exploitive and obvious, we might have been blatantly manipulated into a few tears. Don't ask me why i still liked it. But i did. It won't win any awards, and it didn't end quite the way i expected though close. Clive was more believable as the doctor than Angelina was as a socialite turned socially conscious aid worker. I wouldn't give it high marks but maybe about a 6 out of 10.