Flawed But There Are Some Good Things

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2016)

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
The Serbian Danijel (Goran Kostic) begins a relationship with the Muslim Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) just as the Bosnian War breaks out. Soon Ajla finds herself a captive to Danijel but the two slowly fall in love as the war gets bloodier.
Anjelina Jolie wrote and directed this film, which has a clear message throughout. There's no doubt that Jolie had a political motivation behind the movie and she wanted her message to be heard. Many people have called IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY an awful movie but I'm not going to go that far. In fact, I give Jolie a lot of credit for attempting to make a movie like this and especially when you consider it was the first feature she directed.
There's no doubt that there are a great number of flaws to be found here and I think the biggest problem is in the screenplay. The plot of this movie is extremely light weight and I'd argue that it's way too simple and single minded for its own good. I say that because the love story here is just one-note and it's really not too hard to figure out how it's going to end. I think the film really would have benefited had Jolie punched up the film and made it a bit deeper than just these two opposites who find themselves attracted to one another.
The battle sequences were certainly better handled by Jolie and she certainly wants to show the sometime graphic violence for what it is. I can't help but think that the director was influenced by SCHINDLER'S LIST and she wanted the violence to really hit people in the gut. Another problem with the film is that at just 127 minutes the film seems a lot longer due to the slow pacing as well as some subplots that really never add up to much.
For the most part I thought the performances were the best thing in the picture with Marjanovic easily stealing the film as the woman who faces various forms of horror as she tries to survive her ordeal. I also liked Kostic in his role as I thought he managed to pull off the rather difficult character. With that said, IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY isn't a complete success but it's not the bomb some people have made it out to be.