Dir. Martin Campbell
Writ. Caspian Treadwell-Owen
Act. Angelina Jole, Clive Owen, Teri Polo

The problem with this movie is that the story doesn't know whether it is a romantic drama or a serious editorial piece on the state of refugees in the world. Angelina Jole, who stars in this movie and really cares about this problem, did a decent job acting, however, since her name is no longer associated with serious work, I am guessing that her being in the film hurt it and not helped it. I imagine that if Nicole Kidman was cast in the lead, the movie would have had more appeal to the public. But nobody could save the story, not even the incredibly manly Clive Owen.

Sarah Jordon, played by Angelina Jole (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) is an upper class debutante who is moved by Dr. Nick Callahan, played by Clive Owen (Sin City,) who breaks a dinner party, created by her father-in-law, to raise money for AIDS, and decides to take her savings and go out to Ethiopia where he is and help the refugees. At first Callahan is not receptive to Sarah, feeling that she is just another rich girl trying to feel better about herself. Eventually she proves to him that she is serious. They eventually fall in love when she tries to help him in Cambodia, and Sarah has hard time choosing between the man she loves and the marriage that isn't working save for the kids.

Angelina Jole did a fine job as Sarah Jordon. The character was written very thin and I did not like that Jole's character had to pine for Dr. Nick Callahan, but stay married to her self-involved husband "just for the sake of the kids." The minute she came home from work and she realizes that her husband was fooling around with some other woman seconds before her key hit the door, should be all the motivation she needed to pack up and leave her husband, even if it is to another house for her and the kids. At that point whenever she wanted to go help Nick, the kids can go see dad for the weekend. Jole tried to keep the role consistent.

Has there been a movie the Clive Owen has been in that he is not a billy badass? My God is this man a stud. He does a great job of showing the bad ass that Dr. Callahan has to be in dealing with the kinds of people he has to in order to get the medicine he needs. However, I don't think he did a good job of convincing me that he had any feelings about Jole's character, other then wanting to f**k the sh*t out of her. But I don't know if he is the problem because I have a hard time believing that motivation lies within a character that sees the horror of the refugee camps that a doctor would see on a daily basis.

All of this leads me into the script which is in dire need of a direction to focus on. Caspian Treadwell-Owen wrote this script and I don't quite know where he was going with it. If he was focusing on the need to help refugees around the world and the corrupt governments that harm them, why not just focus on one government and tell the story convincingly? Instead he floats from Africa to Asia and it seems to be more of a love story, and a contrived love story at that, instead of a movie trying to bring awareness. If it is a love story, then why set it against the horror of these people? Again it doesn't make since to me and because of that the movie suffers. Oh and most of the characters are written shallow and self-centered and they seem to care less about helping people and seem to care more about helping themselves, which again doesn't fit the message of the movie. Oh and I did not like the ending because it was telegraphed from the very first time that Jole's character started to get involved with helping refugees. I would have liked to have seen something original.

I can't really tell you if the movie is worth seeing. The movie does continue the tradition of Jole having to bang every leading actor in a movie she has been in. I guess some good did come out of this movie because Angelina Jole discovered that there was something more important than sex and partying because after working in all these hell holes she discovered that real people have horrible lives sometimes and she should help, so she joined the UN. It didn't keep her from stealing husbands but hey, she needs a hobby.

Brian - the Naked Gun