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Beyond Borders
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Romance | War
Written by: Caspian Tredwell-Owen
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 24, 2003
DVD: March 23, 2004
Running Time: 127 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language and war-related violence
Starring Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache, Teri Polo, Yorick van Wageningen, Noah Emmerich, and Elizabeth Whitmere
A romance between a medical student turned international disaster relief worker (Owen) and a philanthropist socialite (Jolie) develops over the years and against the backdrop of disasters and wars.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Casino Royale GoldenEye The Legend of Zorro The Mask of Zorro Vetical Limit
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Its heart is in the right place, and it doesn't flinch an iota from its duty of rubbing our faces in the horror of the Third World over the past two decades.
Read Full Review >New York Post Megan Lehmann
Makes an earnest stab at illustrating the hardships and sacrifices humanitarian workers contend with - but in the end, all the suffering merely forms an amorphous backdrop for a Harlequin romance.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The film's heart is undoubtedly in the right place, but so what? Fine ideals don't mean much when they're couched in an inert, pointless storyline.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
My advice: Skip Beyond Borders and write a check to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The mould for all these stories of hot lust and burning cities, creamy-skinned rich girls and their bitter lovers is that grand and grotesque cinema monument, was "Gone With the Wind." You can't go there again and you shouldn't want to.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
There is evidence that at some point this project (which was initiated by Oliver Stone) might have been serious, but Campbell has produced little more than a churning, vivid backdrop for romance. [10 November 2003, p. 129]
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A superior soap opera, evocative at times of Warren Beatty's "Reds."
Read Full Review >Premiere Scott Warren
When it's all over and it's apparent that entire sections of the film are irrelevant and the paper-thin love story leaves you unsatisfied, hold your tongue, and try to remember that this film is v-e-r-y important.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
When the suffering of real children is used to enhance the image of movie stars who fall in love against the backdrop of their suffering, a certain decency is lacking. Beyond Borders wants it both ways -- glamor up front, and human misery in the background to lend it poignancy.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly 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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Jolie, in this movie at least, has exactly two expressions: blank wistfulness and blank dismay. She reduces the tides of history to one more raided tomb.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune 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.
Read Full Review >USA Today 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.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer 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.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter 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.
Read Full Review >Salon.com 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.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Beyond Borders keeps angling for a peace prize; it might have won more hearts and minds if it came together as a movie.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Jen Chaney
Unfortunately, neither Jolie nor her co-star, the rugged Clive Owen, can save this well-intentioned but astonishingly flat movie, which sinks beneath the weight of romantic cliches and pat plot developments.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Star-driven, high-minded claptrap that, fatally, can't even rig a rooting interest in its central love story.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times 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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Mark Holcomb
It all becomes little more than feel-good-about-feeling-bad window dressing, like an issue of "Utne Reader" in Dolby Surround Sound.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle C.W. Nevius
A film with its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, its head is stuck so far in the clouds that it dissolves into preachy do- gooder mush.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Worse than junk, in fact. Beyond Borders so trivializes the plight of the world's displaced peoples that it becomes actively obnoxious.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
This is a disastrously clumsy, heavy-handed movie, one so desperate and exploitative that it resorts to putting a live grenade in the hands of a baby in order to get its message across.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Such a staggering, start-to-finish disaster that you don't know how to begin detailing its outrages and failings.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Send a check to UNICEF and go see "Lost In Translation," "Mystic River," or "Kill Bill" instead.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
I came out of Beyond Borders with the gnawing feeling I'd just been subjected to some sort of ghastly prank, Punk’d by the director of "GoldenEye" with Lara Croft as his willing confederate.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
All hope is lost for those trapped in theaters with this picture.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A sudsless soap opera with human misery as a backdrop for romantic banality.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.3 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
[Anonymous] gave it a4:
Shows what goes on in the darker parts of the world, but did they have to throw in that LOUSY romance?!!
Nancy L. gave it an 8:
Would have loved to seen actor, Goran Visnjic, in the male lead.
Melanie gave it a 9:
Envokes emotion, and shows the reality of what is going on in other countries and no one cares.
Penny P. gave it an 8:
Okay, yes the ending was hokey and contrived, but believe it or not, people like those depicted in this film really exist and yes romance happens in horrible conditions where there is no hope...no one complained about the romances in The English Patient. Anyone who wasn't moved by the long awaited first kiss scene after the death of a colleague has either never been in love in an impossible intense situation and/or never experienced how death makes the living grasp at a straw for fleeting relief. I found Jolie and Owen utterly believable in their controlled attraction for each other. More importantly, this film brought to life the ugly realities that exist in refugee camps all over this sad planet, every day, year in, year out. Just because it's not on the news every night doesn't mean Africa no longer needs help. Seeing people in service was for me a refreshing and responsible change from the usual Hollywood me-first parade. Hollywood needs to do more of this. And if they don't add stars and romance, how else are they going to get people to know or care about this stuff? Because of the lousy ending, this really only deserves a 7, but I'm giving it an 8 to get these unfairly low ratings up an inch. If you have any heart and a little international knowledge or curiosity, you will appreciate this film.
Jonathan H. gave it a 0:
What a awful idea for a romance movie, Jolie is going on such a downward spiral in her career, it's sad because i think she's talented.
Candace S. gave it a 0:
I went to see this movie at a discount theater! This was one of Angelina Jolie's worst movies I have ever seen in my life! In fact, this was the worst movie since Gigli!
Chad S. gave it a 2:
Angelina Jolie might be absolutely sincere about her Audrey Hepburn, as evidenced by a recent Barbara Walters' interview on 20/20. In real life, maybe Jolie would halt a caravan of trucks so that she could tend to an emaciated child being eagle-eyed by a vulture. But here, regardless of, perhaps, her sincere compassion for the vanquished, it looks absolutely ridiculous. "Now I am beyond belief," wrote Elvis Costello, and these words certainily apply when the third world takes a backseat to Jolie's concern for Owen. A revelation late in the movie is straight out of a soap opera. "Beyond Borders" reminds me of "Battlefield Earth", because in both cases, you have A-list stars who feel very passionate about their causes(Travolta's Scientology & Jolie's land mines), and their passion blinds them from good taste and common sense.
