The character of the war correspondent serves as a ticket to ride for filmmakers who want to get close to the horrors of conflict but not too close. Focusing on the initiation of the passive observer rather than on the ordeal of the participants, this genre creates vicarious thrills but demands minimal commitment. Compared with powerful if problematic films like Circle of Deceit, Salvador, The Killing Fields, Under Fire, and The Year of Living Dangerously, however, Elie Chouraqui’s Harrison’s Flowers wilts.

Pulitzer-winning photographer Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn) takes grief from wife Sarah (Andie MacDowell) for neglecting his family to snap pictures of nasty little Third World conflicts. But when he disappears in the chaos of the Serbian genocide in Vukovar, Sarah goes to look for him herself. Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson, and Elias Koteas compete with choreographed atrocities reminiscent of Schindler’s List (the fate of a girl in a yellow dress is a direct steal), and the embattled populace, perpetrators and victims alike, is dismissed as "crazy." Fine fare if your notion of foreign policy is turning off CNN and tending to the greenhouse.