Harrison’s Flowers

When photojournalist David Strathairn is presumed dead while covering the Yugoslav Civil War, his wife (Andie MacDowell) braves the war zone to find him. Director Elie Chouraqui has a knack for brutal, horrifying warfare, and those scenes have real impact; otherwise the film is not compelling. It’s clearly a slavish imitation of The Killing Fields, but characters are un-involving and the story far-fetched (even the title is ridiculous). The dialogue sounds improvised (non-stop profanity often means the cast is making it up on the spot), and the narration by co-star Elias Koteas sounds patched on at the last minute to try to pull things together. Strathairn is wasted, MacDowell as stiff as ever; only Adrien Brody and Brendan Gleeson (as MacDowell’s fellow travellers) do much with their screen time.