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Terrible story and acting partially redeemed by war footage
"Harrison's Flowers" would be complete and utter cinematic dreck were it not for the fact that it presents an honest and unflinching portrayal of the extreme dangers faced by the brave men and women who covered the Balkan Wars in the early to mid '90s. That harrowing depiction of the journalists and photojournalists aside, "Harrison's Flowers" is not even close to being a good enough movie to recommend.

The story of this film centers on the disappearance of gifted photojournalist, Harrison Lloyd (David Straitharn), while covering for Newsweek civil conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It is presumed by everyone that Harrison was captured and executed by aggressive rebels along with a number of other innocents. Everyone assumes he is dead, except his wife, Sarah (Andie MacDowell), who believes she saw him in obscure camera footage recorded after his supposed death and believes him to be alive. So, she decides to take off on a quest to bring Harrison back home alive. Among those who end up assisting her in this goal is Harrison's professional rival, Kyle (Adrien Brody), and a few other photojournalists played by Elias Koteas and Brendan Gleeson.

Let's stop for a minute and analyze what is taking place. Sarah Lloyd is a typical soccer mom who understands her husband's chosen career and the dangers inherent in it, but she has no knowledge of how to perform that job. Yet, now she wants to go on a crusade to rescue to her husband in a foreign land where outsiders are raped, assaulted, and murdered just for fun. She does this even though she has young children who need to be looked after and are already reeling from the supposed loss of one parent. Sarah has no knowledge, experience, or support that would make anyone think she has a remote chance of achieving her goal, let alone surviving. She just flies off blindly on a mission that could very likely leave her children as orphans.

Interestingly enough, that display of complete irresponsibility is not even the worst part of this film. What really undermines this film is a smattering of unexplained and unnecessary characters, plot developments straight from the 'cliché handbook', and a truly atrocious performance by the lead who plays Sarah, Andie MacDowell. While there is no disputing MacDowell's ability to convey Sarah's grief, that is all the range that MacDowell shows throughout the whole movie. It's impossible to believe that this woman who seems to have no emotions other than crying, whining, and shrieking could be able to be functional enough to even go on this quest, let alone succeed in it. She seems truly and utterly helpless and the audience cannot make a great enough leap to believe that her undying love (and help from a few colleagues) would be enough to guide her to Harrison.

The plot developments from 'clichés 'R Us' includes such tired conventions as one character being too scared to move out of the line of fire, so a brave character goes to save him and gets shot instead. Uggh! I saw that turn of events coming a mile away, and so will anyone will any movie-going experience. Among the superfluous characters is an eager young Balkan gentleman who is bent on providing transportation to Sarah once she lands in country and seems to have been authorized by someone to provide that assistance. Yet, there are no further allusions made to what this character's purpose is and when he's killed three minutes later, he is all but forgotten. Such a character can be explained if this were a documentary or based on a actual people and events, but in a fictional drama, it's just distracting.

This incredibly trite, implausible story would garner a one-star rating if it were not for the uncompromising depiction of the Balkan War. Perhaps if the filmmakers had decided to change to the focus and deal strictly with the war and its atrocities, then they might have had something. Instead, they use a real tragedy to play backdrop to a threadbare love story. Unacceptable!

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Not accepting "until death do us part"
Andie MacDowell is an engaging actress whose films I don't see often enough, yet am gratified when I do. In HARRISON'S FLOWERS, MacDowell plays Sarah Lloyd, the wife of Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn). Both work for Newsweek.

Early on, Harrison is persuaded by his boss to take on one last assignment into harm's way. (This worn out plot device may cause the viewer to cringe. But, let's move on.) So, off Harrison goes with his camera gear to the debris field that was Yugoslavia. It's 1991, and the Croats and Serbs are at each other's throats. A couple weeks later, Sarah receives word that her husband was apparently killed in a building collapse. However, in her gut she believes him to be still alive. So, off she jets to the war zone, leaving her two young children behind, to bring hubby home.

After arriving in Graz, Austria, Sarah rents a car with the intent of driving to Vukovar, where she hopes to find Harrison in the local hospital. In the rental lot, she offers a ride to a young Yugoslav returning from Paris to find his wife. Soon after transiting the border, they cross paths with a rampaging tank accompanied by some very nasty troops, and Sarah is horrifically initiated into the brutal realities of the Serbo-Croat civil war.

In Sarah's subsequent tortuous quest into Hell, Andie's character takes a back seat to those gamely played by Adrien Brody (Kyle Morris) and Brendan Gleeson (Mark Stevenson), media photographers who take Sarah under their wings while moving her forward. For her part, Sarah seems emotionally and psychologically dazed amidst the sudden, random violence and rains of aerial bombs and artillery shells.

HARRISON'S FLOWERS is a gritty, tense and powerful tale in which the French director, Elie Chouraqui, makes no attempt to enlighten the audience on the cultural gulf separating Serb and Croat or the genesis of this particular inter-tribal slaughter. And, for insular U.S. audiences constantly puzzled by Balkan excesses, it probably doesn't matter - all the combatants are crazy.

It's hard to say if the blood lust of the region is realistically depicted or not. However, remembering newspaper reports of the period, it would seem to be. Although the plot is implausible - middle class, American wife swept along to an uncertain destination in the currents of ethnic cleansing - the film is a shocking look at a time and place that most viewers can be thankful they only heard about. And it's probably the closest Andie MacDowell will ever come to being an action hero.

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This Film Tells the Truth About War
I watched this movie for two reasons: I like Andie MacDowell and my last name is Harrison.

I liked this movie because I am a Viet nam vet that fought in Tet and therefore I have some considerable experience with war in a city, or as the Army used to call it War in a Built Up Area. If you have actually seen this kind of war, the movie is frighteningly accurate and like war, necessisarily fragmentary and incomplete.

For example, in one perfect and horrific, scene Andie MacDowell and her two journalist companions are moving through a city to find a hospital where her husband may be. They come upon a situation: a young child, probably a girl runs out of a building in front of them. A soldier follows her out of the building, and kills her. War's brutality? Certainly. A killing mad soldier, killing an innocent child. Possibly. But, even more likely, the scene represents wars brutality on multiple levels. If you knew that the child had just thrown a hand grenade and the soldier escaped it but his buddy, or even more likely in this kind of war, his actual brother did not would that change the nature of the scene for you? Or, if that was true and you knew that the child had another hand grenade, or a pistol, would that change your impression of the meaning of the scene? And how about that soldier many years later as he looks down at his own child, assuming he survives the war, will he be able to forget the look on that other chid's face as he shot her? However good his reason and in real war there are many reasons that can make such an act necessary, will he be able to forget, or will it haunt him. This kind of awful situation, but not unusual situation, is precisely why William T. Sherman said that "War is Hell." For a soldier, having killed a child for any reason must be true Hell, but to have done it on purpose. That would be worse. While I avoided shooting at children, the reality of war among civilians is worse than you could ever imagine even in a nightmare. Say you are a sentry and there is a car speeding toward your post. You open fire. The car stops. Your post is safe. But it turns out that a child is dead. The car was speeding to get to the hospital. That is war in the city and all you have is an instant to make up your mind to shoot, or not to shoot. To kill, or not to kill, and either way to live with the aftermath.

Do the sailors or Marines on watch on the USS Cole wished that they had fired. Even if their orders were not to fire. Even if the approach of the boat with a bomb in it did not look like an attack. Even if a child had been steering the boat with a bomb. I have no doubt that they all wished that they had fired. And they will wish that, and relive that, until they too die. In that sense they are as much causalities of war as their shipmates that suffered actual physical hurt. The Captain of that ship, the Officer of the Day, the Watch officer all will relive and replay that day and regret that no one fired soon or often enough. Watch this movie and you will see what I mean. There are things that happen in war that are horrible, to everybody.

I have seen war and I have seen many war movies - but only rarely have I seen a movie as true to the appalling core of the experience as this is. As our soldiers fight a shadow war in Iraq and in Afghanistan it would be good to remember that war is hell. If you have forgotten, this is a very accurate picture of it.

Yes, the plot is a tad implausible, but I would hope that the wife that my son chooses when he grows up would do as Andie MacDowell's fictional character does and fight to find out what happened to him. I know my wife would.