This would have been a far more interesting film if told from the aid workers' point of view. Or, if it had to be told from her point of view, it would've been much more effective if we had actually ever been able to get inside Angelina Jolie's character. I'm not sure *she* ever got inside the character, which makes it more difficult for the rest of us. Since she's a decent actress, and the subject matter is near to her heart, I expected her to bring more to her performance. Clive Owen did the best with what little was given, but the inadequacies of the script couldn't ultimately be overcome.
The film has excellent, complex, gripping moments, and is strongest when grappling with the complex issues surrounding trying to help people in the midst of factional violence. It presents the moral question of whether to do some wrong in order to serve the greater good, or to risk being shut out of doing good altogether. The scene in Cambodia with the baby and hand grenade was an exceptional tableau of the reality of warfare and the people who get caught in the middle.
But who were these people?? Who was Sarah before she married Henry? Where did she come from? Where did Nick come from? There is no context whatsoever for the characters or why they make the choices they do, except in the broadest, fairy tale sense. There is just a series of choices that move the story forward to the next plot point.
If the film had been told from the aid workers' point of view, we could have gotten inside the characters' skins and understood why they chose as did. As it was, we have to guess. We know that Nick is "driven," that Sarah is "compassionate," and that the warlords are "ruthless." Not much more going on besides that. We never understand what happened in Sarah and Henry's marriage that made him commit adultery. We don't know what happened to the female aid worker whose face was horribly slashed in the Cambodian scene. We don't know how often Sarah and the others write to each other, or what they write about, or if she changes as a person because of her own work with the UN (outside of her experiences in the field). There's no character arc at all.
I also am automatically turned off by love stories where the "love" happens only in the abstract -- whether it's "first love" or, as in this film, "I loved you the whole time I was 10,000 miles away and unaware of anything you were doing or thinking." It's easy to "love" when you haven't been around the object of your affection long enough to get completely annoyed with them, or to face a relationship crisis together, or to try to find some way to keep bringing a sense of renewal to a relationship after years spent together. It's just not compelling to see people making cow eyes at each other and then somehow be expected to cry that they didn't get the chance to have sex more than once. That's not love.
I was also obscurely irritated by Sarah's heavy make-up in the Chechnya sequences. I'd been pleasantly surprised in earlier "field" scenes that Angelina Jolie's face looked relatively "real," but, come Chechnya, she's suddenly all Dr Zhivago.
The subject of the film deserves attention, and the tension generated in every scene where an individual faces an unbearable choice (Elliot and the grenade, Sarah and the mine, Nick and the CIA) shows what level of drama and storytelling was possible. It's unfortunate that that potential couldn't be more fully explored.
The film has excellent, complex, gripping moments, and is strongest when grappling with the complex issues surrounding trying to help people in the midst of factional violence. It presents the moral question of whether to do some wrong in order to serve the greater good, or to risk being shut out of doing good altogether. The scene in Cambodia with the baby and hand grenade was an exceptional tableau of the reality of warfare and the people who get caught in the middle.
But who were these people?? Who was Sarah before she married Henry? Where did she come from? Where did Nick come from? There is no context whatsoever for the characters or why they make the choices they do, except in the broadest, fairy tale sense. There is just a series of choices that move the story forward to the next plot point.
If the film had been told from the aid workers' point of view, we could have gotten inside the characters' skins and understood why they chose as did. As it was, we have to guess. We know that Nick is "driven," that Sarah is "compassionate," and that the warlords are "ruthless." Not much more going on besides that. We never understand what happened in Sarah and Henry's marriage that made him commit adultery. We don't know what happened to the female aid worker whose face was horribly slashed in the Cambodian scene. We don't know how often Sarah and the others write to each other, or what they write about, or if she changes as a person because of her own work with the UN (outside of her experiences in the field). There's no character arc at all.
I also am automatically turned off by love stories where the "love" happens only in the abstract -- whether it's "first love" or, as in this film, "I loved you the whole time I was 10,000 miles away and unaware of anything you were doing or thinking." It's easy to "love" when you haven't been around the object of your affection long enough to get completely annoyed with them, or to face a relationship crisis together, or to try to find some way to keep bringing a sense of renewal to a relationship after years spent together. It's just not compelling to see people making cow eyes at each other and then somehow be expected to cry that they didn't get the chance to have sex more than once. That's not love.
I was also obscurely irritated by Sarah's heavy make-up in the Chechnya sequences. I'd been pleasantly surprised in earlier "field" scenes that Angelina Jolie's face looked relatively "real," but, come Chechnya, she's suddenly all Dr Zhivago.
The subject of the film deserves attention, and the tension generated in every scene where an individual faces an unbearable choice (Elliot and the grenade, Sarah and the mine, Nick and the CIA) shows what level of drama and storytelling was possible. It's unfortunate that that potential couldn't be more fully explored.