This story of a determined woman’s courage to find her husband in a war zone offers winning performances and some effecting moments.
Harrison's Flowers (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:84
Fresh:41
Rotten:43
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: Though it presents the war in shockingly gritty, realistic terms, Harrison's Flowers uses such scenes as background for a trite love story.
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $1,621,845
Synopsis: Andie MacDowell is phenomenal as Sarah Lloyd, a devoted wife and mother who goes to former Yugoslavia to find her husband Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn) when he disappears and is assumed dead.... Andie MacDowell is phenomenal as Sarah Lloyd, a devoted wife and mother who goes to former Yugoslavia to find her husband Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn) when he disappears and is assumed dead. Sarah and Harrison share a deep love and understanding, but Harrison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo journalist, is frequently away on business and the family is starting to suffer. He takes an assignment in the former Yugoslavia, promising Sarah he'll be back for their son's birthday, but he never returns. Knowing in her gut that he's alive, Sarah journeys to find him and discovers the insanity and horror of war. The strength of HARRISON'S FLOWERS lies in its nuanced performances and strong cinematography. Andie MacDowell is alternately gentle, irrational, compassionate, and fierce and her eyes reflect a quiet intensity that's mesmerizing. Adrien Brody's depiction of Kyle, a cynical, drug-addicted photo journalist, is maddening and engaging. His transformation from a bitter, self-centered, wannabe hot shot photographer into Sarah's loyal friend is heartbreaking. The battle scenes are brutal and shocking and reveal the kinds of risks that journalists take when they aggressively pursue a story. Nicola Pecorini's filming captures the finest details as if every moment were a fleeting memory. [More]
Starring: Andie MacDowell, Elias Koteas, Gerard Butler, Adrien Brody
Starring: Andie MacDowell, Elias Koteas, Gerard Butler, Adrien Brody, Marie Trintignant, David Strathairn, Brendan Gleeson, Alun Armstrong, Christopher Clarke
Director: Elie Chouraqui
Director: Elie Chouraqui
Screenwriter: Elie Chouraqui, Michael Katims, Isabel Ellsen
Producer: Albert J. Cohen
Composer: Bruno Coulais, Pascal Obispo
Studio: Universal Focus
Reviews for Harrison's Flowers
Built on a foundation of melodrama and implausible coincidence, Harrison's Flowers is a movie that looks far better on paper than it does onscreen.
A stronger actress, say Michelle Pfeiffer or Cate Blanchette, would have given this political melodrama more credibility and power, but Andie MacDowell is poorly cast and she seems lost.
When describing an Andie MacDowell movie, the words "gritty" and "harrowing" do not immediately spring to mind.
Lacking gravitas, MacDowell is a placeholder for grief, and ergo this sloppy drama is an empty vessel. Leave these Flowers unpicked -- they’re dead on the vine.
Hope, desperation and the ugliness of ethnic cleansing intersect elegantly in director Elie Chouraqui's intense retelling of the 1991 Croatian-Serbian conflict in Yugoslavia.
Utterly predictable and idiotically scripted by writer/director Elie Chouraqui.
Ultimately, Sarah's dedication to finding her husband seems more psychotic than romantic, and nothing in the movie makes a convincing case that one woman's broken heart outweighs all the loss we witness.
The movie too often works against itself, pitting an increasingly implausible story with Chouraqui's hard-core realism.
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