BEYOND BORDERS -- New Jolie flick - beyond boring'

 Hey guys, I just went to what I am told is the first test screening of BEYOND BORDERS.  Oh boy, I am going to tell you right now, this is not going to be a fair review at all.  This is an out-and-out stoning of that film.

  My friend, the Scrubbing Bubble told me earlier this week "We're going to see BEYOND BORDERS with Clive Owen and Angelina Jolie!"  I was mildly interested.  An actor I like and an actress I don't, but at least it's an Oliver Stone movie, isn't it?  "No, Oliver Stone dropped out of the project long ago.  This is directed by... is it Roger Donaldson?  No wait, it's Martin Campbell."  Martin Campbell.  Whenever I hear about him, I'm reminded of that line in SAY ANYTHING about championing mediocrity.  The guy is a hack.  He has directed one good shot in his life (the opening shot of NO ESCAPE, which is then worthless as of shot two and on).  So it was pretty obvious this film was not going to be very good.  But the Scrubbing Bubble had read the script and liked it and had just watched OUT OF AFRICA earlier today to get in the spirit... he'd never seen it before and didn't like it.  Me, I know better tha! n to bother watching OUT OF AFRICA.

  Well, anyway, we went to go see the movie, standing outside in line (perfect that it's the first day since I came to LA that it started raining).  We get in, the movie starts, and... well, it's hard to tell just how bad the movie is going to be by the way it begins.  It seems like it might just be an insipid, tedious movie that tries to seem really important and really romantic, but the message about how bad it is over in other countries is just an excuse for great sex disguised as love... you know, like THE ENGLISH PATIENT.  Oh, but little did I realize the monumental ineptness and pretension that laid waiting for us in further reels.

  This movie follows Sarah (played by Angelina Jolie in her stab the same sort of arrogant "nobly flawed" Meg Ryan has been subjecting us to for the last few years), who has just gotten married to a dull Englishman who belongs to a rich family, who watches at a foreign aid benefit as Nick Callahan (Clive Owen, hopefully not following in Kevin Spacey's footsteps towards preachy overly-sentimental movies) bursts in with a young starving Ethiopian child and chastises all of them for not giving more of a shit about the people starving in Ethiopia.  Like, two scenes later, Sarah is packing up to head to Ethiopia herself to save the nation's famine-stricken population.  She arrives at Nick's camp and flutters around like an angel sent to save them all, specifically picking out one child who Nick was sure was doomed, but with Sarah's love, of course the child miraculously survives...  The whole while, she and Nick constantly stare at each other really ! hard, and teach each other the power of compassion in ways neither could have come to on their own.  Why does no one else realize how important it is that we save these people?  Why are we the only two people saintly enough in this world to really really care?

  You get the idea, don't you?  This is Hollywood preaching about how you, the viewer, don't care enough to do anything to help out those in need... like, say, those Hollywood producers who need you to buy tickets to this movie so that they can make their next payment on their house, Porsche, yacht and second Porsche.  As you watch the scenes set in Ethiopia, watching these starved women and children on screen, you can help but picture them between takes, looking longingly at the craft service table while the above-the-line talent retreats to their air-conditioned trailers and get on their cell phones, calling their agents to say "Never put me in a movie like this again.  Do you know how fat all these extras are making me look?  I've got to figure out what diets they are on..."

  Honestly, this is a social commentary movie with a lot less on it's mind.  The early shots lights to show off Angelina Jolie's knockers foreshadow the "romance" that is the real focal point of this film.  At the mid-point of the movie, taking place in Cambodia, after Sarah and Nick sees their good friend Eddie (Noah Emmerich) shot to death after he rushes to throw away a live grenade that an infant has just pulled the pin on (can we say "ugh?"  The Scrubbing Bubble actually tells me that the baby with the grenade is the only thing held over from the draft of the script he had read, and that the circumstances around it were entirely different.), they meet up in a remote grassy area of some temple ruins (the fakest set in the movie).  Well actually Nick is sitting alone crying in the rain about the loss of his friend and Sarah comes around the bend, the rain soaking her black tank top and her nipples showing prominently.  Without a wor! d they embrace and begin kissing.  And all sadness is gone.  Honestly, there is no hint whatsoever that they have just lost a friend or anything.  They begin to have a pretty graphic sex scene (without nudity), where they are suddenly violently rolling around in the fake grass, Sarah moaning "OH GOD!  YEAH!" as Nick sticks the dickens in her.  The scene is played entirely for eroticism, honestly looking like a strange outtake from TOMB RAIDER.

  From the moment that Nick and Sarah have consummated their passion, we never see a starving person for the rest of the movie.  This, of course, is so that Nick and Sarah's love story will not be diminished by the more important, but nonetheless discarded, subject of the movie.  And so, what this movie is telling us on a subconscious level that Nick and Sarah's love (in the form of great sex) has CURED WORLD HUNGER.

  Do you get my point?  This is the worst kind of bad movie there is.  It is entirely joyless, except for the joy you get trashing it after it's over... in fact, the only reason I was inclined enough to sit through the whole movie was so that I could write especially mean comments on the feedback cards (where I got the special opportunity to tell Martin Campbell firsthand to "stop making movies!").  As I made a comment in the theater about consciously wanting to come up with meaner comments for the sheet, many people around me laughed agreeable.  And moments later, we listen as the test group people are desperately trying to find couples in the audience who actually liked the movie for the focus group.  One exclaimed to her co-worker that she had actually just found two people who had scored the film as "excellent."  He seemed impressed.  Meanwhile, I was sitting in a full row of "poor" markings, including the Scrubbing Bubbl! e, who leaning over my shoulder just moments ago, insisted that I let everyone know just how much he despised the film as well.

  This is a movie that people that some people will love passionately.  It's the kind of awful film, like PAY IT FORWARD, that people who don't go to see movies often will think is masterful, and really important, and that those of us who are detractors are just uncaring bastards.  Some critics will probably be foolish enough to compare it to David Lean, and I'm sure Martin Campbell would love that... the film purposely tries to cop the looks of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in the Ethiopian half, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI in the Cambodian half and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO in the Chechnyan half (completely with Jolie's cute little hat).  Note, yes, as I just pointed out, this movie is so overlong that it actually has three halves.  When asked on the feedback sheet whether the film moved too slowly in any parts, I put it like this, "A movie this bad could not possibly be short enough."

  Stay at home, rent THREE KINGS on DVD, hope that Clive Owen someday makes another film as good as CROUPIER and hope that Martin Campbell (and Angelina Jolies for that matter) never make another film again.

   This is The Keen Guy.