Harrison’s Flowers
With the multiplex glutted by films that denigrate humanity in favor of hardware (Resident Evil, The Time Machine), it should be satisfying to find a film that tackles the work of war-zone journalists. Sadly, this one too often cheapens its good intentions and raw scenes of atrocities in Bosnia with trite melodrama. On a 1991 assignment for Newsweek in Yugoslavia, photojournalist Harrison Lloyd (the excellent David Strathairn) is reported missing. His wife, Sarah (Andie MacDowell, over her head), refuses to accept the worst and travels to Yugoslavia, throwing herself into the conflict to find him. Director Elie Chouraqui, who co-wrote the script, catches the chaotic horror of war, but why bother if you're going to subjugate truth to the tear-jerking demands of soap opera?