Director Mike Tollin (who’s created memorable sports documentaries, but whose only prior feature film was the slick, shallow baseball movie “Summer Catch”) took some liberties in re-arranging the facts of his story: in actuality, it was several coaches who befriended Radio, not just one, and his gradual acceptance as a fixture at the high school took many years, not just 1976 (a historical moment that the movie evokes effortlessly and fondly). As a bonus in the film’s final moments, Tollin provides richly moving footage showing the actual characters Gooding and Harris have played so well, some quarter century after the events of the film. In keeping with the project’s soulful humanity, even the less attractive characters (like the self-centered hotshot of the athletic department or his meddlesome banker dad) emerge with sympathetic, believable features.
Ed Harris, meanwhile, creates one of the most complex and admirable heroes in recent films – a hard-driving workaholic who preaches and exemplifies self-discipline, but develops an unlikely tenderness before our eyes. His brilliant performance creates a dilemma for all those who have noted his outspoken leftwing activism, and perhaps for Mr. Harris himself. Off camera, this richly accomplished actor not only gives voice to the Bush-bashing, America-blaming line so typical of the Hollywood elite, but devotes special attention to the cause of “abortion rights.” He recently spoke at the annual banquet for NARAL – the National Abortion Rights Action League – and stridently identified with their unapologetic pro-abortion stand. Ironically, the logic of this organization’s single-minded glorification of “pregnancy termination” would lead them to applaud the optional murder, in utero, of “damaged” human beings like Radio in the movie. One can only hope that Mr. Harris remains intelligent and open-minded enough to understand that whatever his “pro-choice” personal commitments, he has contributed his considerable talents to a movie that remains unavoidably, potently pro-life – with its insistence on the dignity, and infinite worth, of even the most imperfect and vulnerable human being. Rated PG, for brief flashes of rude language, but ideal entertainment for any moviegoers about the age of eight. FOUR STARS.
Despite the stirring success of “Radio,” good intentions in moviemaking do not always lead to good results, and Angelina Jolie’s preachy, pathetic “Beyond Borders” represents an especially painful case in point. She plays a pampered American wife of an upper-crust British husband (the underutilized Linus Roache) who’s so taken with a radical, renegade physician (the grubby, rugged Clive Owen) at a charity banquet that she follows him on a lifesaving mission to Ethiopia. The movie then offers a travelogue of suffering humanity hotspots, watching the two adulterous lovebirds as they jet set to elaborate locations of picturesque pathos in Cambodia and Chechnya in a dazzling pageant of pain. Amidst all the severed limbs, bloated bellies and starving masses, the two stars saunter unscathed and unstained, like impeccably groomed models for Abercrombie or Urban Outfitters.
To justify the heroine’s extramarital involvement, the script even throws in a brief interchange suggesting that her hubby cheated first, so everything’s okay. In addition to the long, smoldering, blue-eyed stares of its two over-acting principals, the film features tedious, clunky speeches about the necessity for spoiled Americans and Europeans to get involved in easing the misery of the less fortunate. The failure to place this message in even the most generalized spiritual context leaves the movie as substantively undernourished as the anorexic Ms. Jolie herself – who appears to carry at least a third of her body weight in her impossibly, impressively luxuriant lips. In personal life, she has adopted an impoverished child from Cambodia and committed a full one third of her considerable income to efforts to feed the world’s hungry multitudes. This sort of altruism commands respect, whatever the failings of the Oscar-winning star’s personal life, but her indulgent, insufferable motion picture richly earns the contempt it will inspire. “Beyond Borders” is “Beyond Boredom,” with its painfully protracted two-hour running time feeling like a maudlin marathon. ONE AND A HALF STARS. Rated R for incessant foul language, graphic and sometimes shocking violence, and one feeble, chemistry-free sex scene.
Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio show focusing on the intersection of politics and pop culture. He's the author of eight non-fiction books, was co-host for 12 years on "Sneak Previews" on PBS, and is the former Chief Film Critic for the New York Post.
