Director Michael Winterbottom's new Welcome to Sarajevo opens fiercely, with the kind of moment that snaps your eyes wide open and makes you remember what the movies can really be about. As a wedding party leaves a Sarajevo church, one of the members is shot dead by an unseen sniper. The group scatters. The bride runs away in slow motion, a vision in white. Cut to the press, a cadre of photographers and videographers huddled together at a semi-safe vantage, cameras clicking in a staccato fury. It's a footnote to history recreated in widescreen and Dolby stereo. Winterbottom stretches the moment just long enough for us to understand its subtext -- how important it is that somebody be present to take those pictures, lest this bombed-out city be forgotten by the Western world, and what it must mean to be a journalist, covering these horrifying everyday events but staying (at least in theory) at a clean remove, like a Wenders angel.

If only the rest of the movie were as riveting, as demanding of our attention. Welcome to Sarajevo has the makings of a small masterpiece, but it loses its way. It's a fascinating film, to be sure, even if Winterbottom does resort to such hardball tactics as cutting video footage of real Sarajevan casualties into the mix in order to focus our attention and our sympathies. That's fair play, I suppose, for a film that indicts the unresponsiveness of the Western world during the years when innocent men, women, and children were being shot dead and blown to bits on the streets of the Bosnian capital. ("We have to deal with 13 countries in the world which are worse than Sarajevo," a United Nations type tells the press corps at one point.) But it's used to enliven a film that doesn't muster a sufficient sense of outrage through its own drama. As social commentary, Welcome to Sarajevo is acrid and spiky. As cinema, however, it becomes just a little bit dull.

But it gets by on the strength of its convictions, not least of which was Winterbottom's determination to shoot on location, beginning in the post-war summer of 1996. If you're not familiar with the Bosnian conflict, this film will serve as a crash course on the hostilities as well as a record of the damage wrought on the city itself. In short, the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo was uniquely positioned to take the brunt of violence as the former Yugoslavia broke into independent nations. Sarajevo was caught in the crossfire as radical Bosnian Serbs began a campaign to cleanse Bosnia of Muslims. Although tensions between Serbians, Croations and Muslims have long sparked violence in the region, Sarajevo was a city where all three ethnic groups lived in close proximity, which fueled the fires as the war raged on. Eyewitnesses to the fighting in Sarajevo reported that neighbors were opening fire on one another.

Based on the nonfiction book Natasha's Story by British journalist Michael Nicholson (and "inspired by" actual events), Welcome to Sarajevo is the story of the Western press corps living in the besieged city, struggling to galvanize the world's conscience against the fighting. Coverage of what became known as the "bread-line massacre," for instance, when Bosnian Serbs bombed a group of Sarajevans waiting to buy bread, killing 16 and wounding many more, is shunted into second place on the news programs by the divorce of Andrew and Fergie.

Modeled on Nicholson, Michael Henderson (Stephen Dillane) is particularly appalled at the world's reluctance to condemn or even acknowledge the continuing tragedy. And he's particularly drawn to the plight of Sarajevan children, especially those at an orphanage he discovers and focuses his energy on covering. "As long as the U.N. are here," he tells his colleagues, "I'm going to keep those kids on the screen. Every night, different child, same message: get me out of here." Like his real-world counterpart, Henderson will eventually take it upon himself to smuggle one of these children, Emira (Emira Nusevic), out of the country.

Woody Harrelson plays Flynn, a cynical hotshot from America who steps into the story he's covering at one point, when he carries a wounded civilian out of the line of fire. Rounding out the ensemble are Emily Lloyd as a freelancer, Marisa Tomei as the American aid worker who wants to get the orphans out of Sarajevo, Kerry Fox (of Shallow Grave) as Henderson's producer, and Goran Visnjic as their driver. Much of the film depicts their everyday existence at a local hotel, where the procurement of a few eggs is cause for celebration. By the time Flynn shows up at the Holiday Inn with footage from Serb concentration camps -- which are bone-chillingly reminiscent of those other pain-stricken concentration camps -- the sense of outrage is complete.

But since there must be a story, we're soon caught up in Henderson's scheme to get Emira out of the country. Welcome to Sarajevo gets certain things just right, like Henderson's wife's flabbergasted but understanding reaction to the news that he is bringing a Sarajevan orphan home with him. Even so, the film remains at a cool distance to these characters, never quite forcing our identification with either of them. Later, when it's discovered that Emira's mother is alive -- and wants her back -- Henderson's inescapable journey back to Sarajevo is intriguing, but we're not emotionally involved in the story. These characters seem almost purely representational -- they're different types of people rather than people in their own right. I can't help but think a little more imagination in the screenwriting department might have helped flesh everybody out and make us closer witnesses to their desperation.

Winterbottom is no stranger to the desperate situation. His two previous films to receive a U.S. theatrical release were the lesbian serial killer drama Butterfly Kiss and the Thomas Hardy adaptation Jude, both of which leave you with the oddly satisfying feeling of having been whalloped in the midsection so hard as to have your breath knocked out of you. (He also directed the acclaimed Go Now, starring Trainspotting's Robert Carlyle as an MS victim.) Welcome to Sarajevo has a similarly lasting impact. The picture feels slight, and disappointingly understated as you watch it. But it's a persistent little film, and it sticks with you. Maybe this is what it would be like to really be there. Day by day, the sickening violence takes on a sameness, and the siege becomes unremarkable on its own terms. Still, it scars you. And when you leave this country, you're haunted for life by the ghosts of the Sarajevans.