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.