Saturday, October 6, 2012

In the Land of Blood and Honey

A Muslim woman (Zana Marjanovic) and a Serbian soldier (Goran Kostic) have an affair and find themselves reunited when he saves her from group rape and holds her in the tenuous capacity as his live-in mistress, during the Bosnian War that raged across the Balkans in the early 1990s. "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is the directorial debut from Angelina Jolie, who shows a sure hand and a keen eye for her craft, but is done a disservice by the central outlandish and torrid relationship of her story, which does a great disservice to the harrowing material. The film is fairly engrossing, however, and Marjanovic is particularly effective and heartbreaking.