Beyond Borders
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: October 24, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
32
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
15
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam 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
63
New York PostMegan 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
50
L.A. WeeklyScott 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
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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
50
Chicago TribuneMark 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
50
USA TodayClaudia 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
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
A superior soap opera, evocative at times of Warren Beatty's "Reds." Read full review
50
PremiereScott 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
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger 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
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
My advice: Skip Beyond Borders and write a check to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. Read full review
50
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
50
ReelViewsJames 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
50
The New YorkerDavid 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]
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk 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
40
Dallas ObserverLuke 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
40
SalonStephanie 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
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
A cheesy romance tricked up in cheap sanctimony. Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Of this much I'm sure: It's an awful movie. Read full review
38
Baltimore SunMichael 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
30
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Star-driven, high-minded claptrap that, fatally, can't even rig a rooting interest in its central love story. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesKenneth 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
30
Village VoiceMark 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
25
Boston GlobeTy 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
25
Miami HeraldRene 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
25
San Francisco ChronicleC.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
25
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Such a staggering, start-to-finish disaster that you don't know how to begin detailing its outrages and failings. Read full review
20
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
All hope is lost for those trapped in theaters with this picture. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A sudsless soap opera with human misery as a backdrop for romantic banality.
20
Washington PostLibby Copeland
The premise of the movie deserves better. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleMarc 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
20
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Send a check to UNICEF and go see "Lost In Translation," "Mystic River," or "Kill Bill" instead. Read full review
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