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Beyond Borders

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Germany, United States · 2003
Rated R · 2h 7m
Director Martin Campbell
Starring Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Teri Polo, Linus Roache
Genre Drama, Romance, Adventure, War

Beyond Borders is an epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers set against the backdrop of the world's most dangerous hot spots. Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie stars as Sarah Jordan, an American living in London in 1984. She is married to Henry Bauford son of a wealthy British industrialist, when she encounters Nick Callahan a renegade doctor, whose impassioned plea for help to support his relief efforts in war-torn Africa moves her deeply. As a result, Sarah embarks upon a journey of discovery that leads to danger, heartbreak and romance in the far corners of the world.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

50

USA Today by Claudia Puig

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.

30

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

The hard truth is that the line between being deadly earnest and unintentionally silly is thinner than these people think, and Beyond Borders turns out to be an unreal film about a real situation, unavoidably cartoonish, as was the earlier "Tears of the Sun," in its attempt to join crucial issues to ridiculous melodrama.

40

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

Even assuming the best possible motives by its makers, Beyond Borders runs the risk of making human suffering exotic while glamorizing white disaster relief workers in the Third World.

40

Dallas Observer by Luke Y. Thompson

It's not a bad film, exactly, just a confused one, too violent to be a straight romance and too focused on aid relief to be an ass-kicking action flick.

50

Chicago Tribune by Mark Caro

By throwing so much weight to the love story and increasingly contrived setups, the movie does what you secretly, guiltily hope it will do: It lets you off the hook.

50

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

As kitsch, however, it's pretty enjoyable. Jolie and Owen perform with such conviction, and the film -- blissfully unaware of its own badness -- takes its paperback-romance shenanigans with such goofy gravity, that it's easy to get caught up in the whole, soap-opera thrust of the thing.

40

Salon by Stephanie Zacharek

Has a TV Movie of the Week righteousness about it -- you can feel the way the filmmakers and the director are struggling to educate us, even as they must surely know, deep in their hearts, that the florid, doomed romance is the real focus of the movie.

30

Variety by Todd McCarthy

Star-driven, high-minded claptrap that, fatally, can't even rig a rooting interest in its central love story.

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