Welcome To Sarajevo

Apparently, some people are so cowed by the mere existence of this movie, and by the ghastly real-life news footage of wartime atrocities that director Michael Winterbottom intercuts with his fictional tale, that they're unfazed by the fact that the film is a numb, well-intentioned bore. Woody Harrelson is prominently billed, but his courageous wiseacre plays a minor role, as do characters portrayed by other well-known actors like Marisa Tomei, Kerry Fox and Emily Lloyd; the focus is on an earnest British reporter (Stephen Dillane) who gets fed up with waiting for somebody to rescue the kids at a local orphanage and decides to take one little girl home with him. That's certainly the germ of a great drama, but Winterbottom doesn't bother to dramatize it; he simply plops it in front of you and counts on the immediacy of the carnage to fill in the details, or at least compensate for the lack of them. (The girl gets a 45-second Happy-in-England montage before the plot whisks her back to Bosnia, and she remains an emblem rather than a person throughout.) A few startling moments aside, the result is about as emotionally overwhelming as a CNN special report. Not recommended. (M D'Angelo)