# Welcome To Sarajevo (1997)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

    WELCOME TO SARAJEVO
    (Miramax)
    Starring:  Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Emira Nusevic,
    Goran Visnjic, Kerry Fox.
    Screenplay:  Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on the book "Natasha's Story" by
    Michael Nicholson.
    Producers:
    Director:  Michael Winterbottom.
    MPAA Rating:  R (violence)
    Running Time:  101 minutes.
    Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

Michael Winterbottom's WELCOME TO SARAJEVO is a lot like its central character, British reporter Michael Henderson (Stephen Dillane). An observer on the front lines of the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, Henderson is torn between conflicting instincts. As a journalist, he believes he should be detached and objective as he tells the story of Sarajevo to the world; as a human being, he feels compelled to beccome emotionally involved, to take action which will help ease the suffering.

Henderson eventually chooses the latter course. The film, on the other hand, isn't quite so resolute. Much of the time, Winterbottom seems content to provide a documentary-style history of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Archival footage of speeches and politicians' comments are strewn throughout the narrative, while bombings and sniper attacks are depicted with gruesome real-life footage of dead bodies and mangled limbs. The images are powerful and immediate, but they become the story rather than complementing it. Henderson begins to seem like a character digitally insterted, Forrest Gump-like, into historical events.

When the story does focus on his actions, it fumbles away too many opportunities to personalize its grand-scale tragedy. Character relationships, like those between Henderson and a brash American reporter (Woody Harrelson) and his no-nonsense producer (Kerry Fox), get just enough attention to be frustrating; Henderson's devotion to an orphan named Emira (Emira Nusevic) is rushed until it feels more like a cinematic necessity than a genuine connection. Even the film's most potentially intense sequence, involving the illegal transport of a bus-load of orphans out of the country, feels strangely sedate despite one gripping encounter at a Bosnian checkpoint. That sequence doesn't even serve as the film's climax, leading into a dry 20-minute search for Emira's birth mother which grinds WELCOME TO SARAJEVO to a halt. Far too often, Winterbottom and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce demonstrate a clumsy disregard for building a narrative with an emotional pull beyond its bursts of authentic violence.

I can easily imagine a film like WELCOME TO SARAJEVO degenerating into pathos in Hollywood hands, so perhaps it deserves some credit for avoiding copious shots of sad-eyed waifs. Winterbottom simply goes too far in the other direction. The performances and direction are sturdy but rarely inspired, resulting in a film which makes us feel terrible about this tragic conflict in a very abstract sense. WELCOME TO SARAJEVO is good reporting, but it's not particularly good drama, treating its subject with the concerned detachment of a newsmagazine feature story.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Split decisions:  5.

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