IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (USA 2011) **
Directed by Angeline Jolie

Written and directed by Angelina Jolie, her ambitious film IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY starts off with a baby in the cradle followed by the appearance of the well dressed aunt, Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) surely a sight that reminds one of Jolie and one of her adopted babies.

It is obvious that Jolie intends to make an impact on her audience to demonstrate the horrors of the Bosnian war that rocked the Balkan region in the 1990’s.  But her film lacks depth, character development and a strong narrative despite many highly charged emotional scenes (the couple’s confrontation) and disturbing sequences (the rape scene).

The film tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostik) and Ajla (Marjanovic), two people from different sides of a brutal ethnic conflict.  Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, and Ajla, a Muslim Bosnian held captive in the camp he oversees (for sex and other purposes), knew each other before the war, and could have found love with each other. But as the armed conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship grows darker, their motives and connection to one another ambiguous, their allegiances uncertain.

The film begins with Danijel and Ajla dancing in a café.  A bomb is detonated and the place blown to pieces, with the couple then tending to the wounded.  Nothing is mentioned of how the bomb got placed or who were responsible.  The script (by Jolie) also fails to establish firmly the origin of the war or how the couple met in the first place.  Incidents occur thus without a solid purpose resulting in often questionable purposes.

Jolie shoots her film in the region’s languages (Bosnian and Serbian) to her credit and the film does not fall short of authenticity in any aspect.  But her film drags on for over 2 hours with one wishing both the war and the film to end.  The film was nominated for the Golden Globes Best Foreign Film.