Our Flick of the Week is “Welcome to Sarajevo,” which mixes the intriguing world of TV foreign correspondents with the deadly conflict between Bosnian Serbs and Muslim natives there. Woody Harrelson, who takes on as many exciting and challenging projects as any actor these days, plays an American TV reporter who is a bit of a showboat but ends up being taken on an emotional ride that brings him (and us) up short. He begins to care about the people he is covering.
But the surprise of this story is that Harrelson’s character is not the central one in the film. That role is left to a British correspondent (Stephen Dillane) who ends up making a commitment to a young girl, one of many orphans of the war, at his own and her peril. He promises to take her away from the war and provide a home.
More Top Picks Best Snow Boots For Men
“Welcome to Sarajevo” features a cast of exceptionally fine actors in supporting roles, including Emily Lloyd as a free-lance journalist covering her first war; Kerry Fox, the marvelous Australian talent (“An Angel at My Table”) as the Brit journalist’s producer; and Marisa Tomei as an American aid worker. What they and their characters share in common is intelligence, and seeing a bunch of smart people gradually become hooked into the human cost of the war is drama enough.
I usually don’t cite other film critics in my reviews, but “Welcome to Sarajevo” has earned the praise of our nation’s leading film fan, whose screening room is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He recently touted it at length to a meeting of religious leaders, and he’s right. Rated R. (star) (star) (star) 1/2
– THE BOXER. Writer-director Jim Sheridan (“In the Name of the Father”) continues his examination of the Irish conflict through the story of an IRA member (Daniel Day-Lewis) who tries to put his life back together after 14 years in prison. His old girlfriend (Emily Watson) is now the wife of his best friend — now in prison — and the tentative relationship between her and Day-Lewis’ character is part of the film’s mosaic of people trapped by roles that the hatreds of their ancestors have created. As good as the cast is here, however, some of their speeches seem painfully obvious, and I couldn’t grasp what is new about this story. R. (star) (star) 1/2
– = New this week