Beyond Borders

Beyond Borders follows Sarah Jordan, a sheltered American married into a wealthy British family and living in London in 1984. At a charity event she hears Nick Callahan, a doctor who works in war zones, deliver an impassioned appeal on behalf of children caught in conflict. His words push her to leave her comfortable life behind and join relief work overseas. What begins as a desire to help becomes a long, dangerous involvement with Nick and his cause, carrying the two of them through crisis regions in Ethiopia, Cambodia and Chechnya over roughly a decade. The film traces how this commitment strains her marriage and draws her repeatedly back toward a man wholly given to his work.

Martin Campbell directed the film, the eighth of the eighteen features he has made, arriving between Vertical Limit and The Legend of Zorro. Caspian Tredwell-Owen wrote the screenplay, and Lloyd Phillips, Dan Halsted and John D. Schofield produced. Angelina Jolie plays Sarah, with Clive Owen as Nick, alongside Teri Polo, Linus Roache, Noah Emmerich and Yorick van Wageningen. The credited cast numbers fifty-one and the crew forty-five.

Made for a budget of thirty-five million dollars, the film returned about twelve million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.4 out of 10 from roughly thirty thousand votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 6.4 from around four hundred fifty votes. A critics' rating of 4.3 out of 10 from just over a hundred reviews places it well below the audience scores.