In need of aid

Gerardo Helguero of Glendale is a computer technician.

Martin Campbell’s “Beyond Borders” plays out like a dry lecture on

refugee aid with a feeble love story straining to move the action

forward.

The refugees, as depicted in this film, are often little more than

thousands of silhouettes, walking statistics, not human beings at all

-- precisely the soulless perception the film wants to protest.

Angelina Jolie’s character, Sarah, is a naive but earnest woman who

gives time and money to relief efforts in a famine-stricken desert in

Ethiopia and the war-torn jungles of Cambodia.

In the process, she falls in love with a determined doctor (Clive

Owen), but his idealism makes the pressing needs of the people he

serves take precedence over their personal relationship.

In a moment of vulnerability that feels unconvincing, the thick-

skinned doctor confesses to Sarah that he would rather not say the

names of the people he meets because that acknowledgment becomes too

painful when they are taken from him.

Unfortunately, not one refugee’s name is memorable because they

are, inadvert- ently one would hope, treated as props and not fully

developed characters. This film’s storytelling techniques should also

fall into oblivion.

* “Beyond Borders” is rated R for language and war-related

violence.