Not without my husband

>> Harrison’s Flowers is simple but affecting

by MATTHEW HAYS

Like The China Syndrome, Harrison’s Flowers is one of those freakily prescient films that will benefit from its unwitting timeliness. Shot two years ago in the Czech Republic, already released in France, the film opens in North America this week shortly after the news of the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
In Flowers, based on war correspondent Isabel Ellsen’s book, Andie MacDowell plays a Newsweek journalist who’s married to a hotshot photojournalist (David Strathairn). Tired of photographing the horrors of war, Strathairn is committed to throwing in the towel and spending more time at home with his family. But his editor convinces him to head out one more time, this gig landing him in Bosnia in ’91. Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but this couldn’t have been worse timing.

Soon missing and assumed dead by virtually everyone, Strathairn’s fate isn’t really known for sure. But MacDowell, loving wife that she is, is convinced he’s still alive and holed up somewhere in the war-torn region. She heads back to the country and, with the help of a guide, heads into the former Yugoslavia’s worst region, desperate to find her husband.
A good deal of Harrison’s Flowers is predictable and the film has already come under attack from experienced war correspondents for its unrealistic plot twists and details (see Sunday’s New York Times). But an able cast that includes Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson and MacDowell (don’t forget, before she became a cosmetics spokesmodel she delivered decent turns in films like sex, lies, and videotape and Short Cuts) lifts the material immeasurably. What’s more, the film does make some intelligent points about how much of the genocide in the region went underreported and uninterrupted for far, far too long.
I sincerely doubt Flowers will win any Oscars. But it’s a worthwhile look at the challenges facing war correspondents. After the fate of Pearl and, to a lesser extent the detainment of Mirror freelancer Ken Hechtman, Flowers will strike a strange but heartwrenching nerve among movie audiences. :

Harrison’s Flowers opens Friday, March 15