OxfordPress.com

Verdict: Good intentions can't overcome a disjointed story.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
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Barging into a sedate black-tie charity benefit in 1984 London with an emaciated African boy in tow, international relief worker Nick Callahan (Clive Owen) makes quite a tempestuous entrance. If only the rest of his movie were as strongly charged.

“Beyond Borders” is a standard-issue, somewhat old-fashioned adventure romance that, fortunately, has a few definite pluses. One is Owen, whose sexy, commanding performance reveals a virile leading-man quality we haven't seen in “Croupier” or his BMW commercials.

Another positive is the movie's illuminating glance into the world's hell holes, where droughts, disease or, as John Sayles so simply put it, men with guns decimate entire populations. Cinematographer Phil Meheux creates a riveting dichotomy between the odd beauty of the land and the bestial conditions in which the inhabitants live.

Back to the London benefit. Nick is tossed out on his ear, but not before making a huge impression on Sarah Jordan (Angelina Jolie), a pampered newlywed. Briefly abandoning her wealthy, upper-crust husband (Linus Roache), she delivers a load of medical supplies and good will to Nick in North Africa. Decked out in flowing white linen and broad-brim hat, she looks more like she's going to a garden party than a refugee camp teeming with disease, poverty and starvation.

For the rest of the movie, Sarah follows Nick from one hot spot to the next. Her hair changes, as do the locales — the African desert, the Cambodian jungle, snowy Chechnya. All the while, the pair's connection intensifies in a romantic, '50s way (think Rock Hudson and Susan Hayward), but the shocking last scene is far more surprising than you'd expect from this sort of picture.

As the socialite do-gooder who trades pearls and cashmere sweaters for fatigues and boots, Jolie is more subdued than usual. Of course, she's not playing Lara Croft or the Oscar-winning psycho from “Girl Interrupted.” Still, there's a sense of her holding back, of wanting us to focus on the horrors her character witnesses rather than the character herself. Her performance has a self-effacing quality, suggesting, perhaps, it's been influenced by her own generous involvement in Third World relief work.

The supporting characters are mostly one-note, but they're ably handled by Loache, Teri Polo and Noah Emmerich. However, in Cambodia, a local relief worker with a prosthetic leg rivets our attention with a harrowing and memorable speech about what it was like when he put his foot down and heard a land mine's fatal click.

“Beyond Borders” offers images that are difficult to shake — a skeletal toddler that you have to believe is a special effect a la E.T. Or maimed refugees in Africa, desperate for food, for medical care, for anything. A confrontation with the Khmer Rouge is especially intense.

Unfortunately, these are pieces of a good movie, not a good movie as a whole. With its strong cast, exotic locations and compassionate themes, “Beyond Borders” looks and feels like it should've been a more important, affecting film than it actually is.