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MOVIE REVIEW

Harrison's Flowers

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for strong war violence and gruesome images, pervasive language and brief drug use.

Reviewed by: Jonathan Rothgeb
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Average
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Foreign / Drama
Length: 2 hr. 10 min.
Year of Release: 2002
USA Release:
Andie MacDowell in “Harrison’s Flowers”
Featuring Marie Trintignant, Alun Armstrong, Christopher Clarke, Andie MacDowell, David Strathairn
Director Elie Chouraqui
Producer Albert J. Cohen, Elie Chouraqui, Albert Cohen
Distributor Universal Focus

When I first saw a trailer for this movie I must say I was only somewhat intrigued (note to self: go with your first intuition). After reading about the film I thought, “Hey this would make a good date flick.” *WRONG!* Though promoted as a action/romance, make no mistake this is a war film in its rawest form.

The basic synopsis is a story of a world class photojournalist named Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn) who, in “the waning years of his career, takes an assignment covering the Serbian-Croatian war.” He soon is reported dead but his wife Sarah (Andie MacDowell), does not believe it and is bent on going after him. So begins a rather unbelievable story of a wife taking on the role of a photojournalist and entering the worst elements of war to rescue her wounded husband.

On her first day she is almost raped and killed but is able to stumble across the help of two other photojournalist who agree to take her into the very heat of the enemy line.

The element of romance is quickly lost in the graphic nature of this film. I have seen “Saving Private Ryan,” “Blackhawk Down,” and “We Were Soldiers,” and yet none of those pictures touched on some of the worst elements of war—how the civilians are treated. This war was especially horrible, because it was genocide in its purest form. There are scenes of rape, child murder and rape, and mass murder. The language is also prolific with profanity and there is accepted drug use even before the war scenes. The single redeeming factor is that it shows a strong family bond and mutual support, but that’s about it.

I was caught up in the story but it did tend to drag much of the time. And as mentioned before, the whole premise was rather unbelievable. In the wake of the murder of Daniel Pearl, the film gave me a glimpse of reality for many journalist who cover wars. I just think it could have been handled so much better. I walked away believing that this movie was more about taking advantage of a nation engrossed in war films than about conveying some sort of message about war.

I would not recommend this picture. Your money would be better spent if you saw a war movie with a more positive message, like “We Were Soldiers”.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative—I went into the movie thinking it would be more of a Romantic love story between a husband and wife only to find out that it was very much a war movie. There are scenes in the movie that were so graphic that I still can’t get them out of my head. Graphic scenes of innocent men, women and children being tortured and killed in cold blood. This was a really heavy film. There was also a lot of bad language used.
My Ratings: [Very Offensive / 3½]
Ray, age 26