'FLOWERS' EMITS SCENT OF DOOM.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

IF IT SEEMS a little bit late in the game to recommend a movie because of its graphic depiction of the brutality of war, then read no further. The unfortunately named ``Harrison's Flowers'' is not for you.

Set at the beginning of the Croatian civil war, this harrowing journey into combat hell vividly captures the chaotic insanity and personal tragedies that are all too abundant when human hatred spews forth unchecked. Coming on the heels of ``Black Hawk Down,'' ``We Were Soldiers'' and the brief, documentarylike scenes in ``Behind Enemy Lines,'' this film is yet another reminder that while war may be hell, it sure has the makings for engrossing big-screen drama.

In fact, ``Harrison's Flowers'' doesn't really get going until it reaches the killing fields of Croatia. The movie's set-up is rather standard-issue: A Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Harrison (David Strathairn), decides to hang up his camera and devote himself to his adoring wife, Sarah (Andie MacDowell), his two children and a passion for puttering around the greenhouse.

Fate intervenes in the form of one last assignment. Harrison is sent to Croatia to cover what his editor views as a routine ``skirmish.'' Wrong. Horrible images are soon being broadcast on the evening news, and when Harrison turns up missing, it's presumed that he's dead. An anguished Sarah doesn't believe it and heads to Croatia to find her husband.

It's not the wisest decision, as the movie soon makes clear, but help for Sarah soon arrives in the form of two of Harrison's colleagues - impetuous hothead Kyle (a riveting Adrien Brody) and a veteran Irish photographer (Brendan Gleeson, underused here). Kyle had a contentious relationship with Harrison and doesn't really believe he's alive, but the angry young man still agrees to take Sarah across treacherous territory to reach a hospital where Harrison might be.

Obviously, there are some considerable obstacles standing in their way - and a few for the audience as well. First, you have to get past the idea that the lovely MacDowell, playing a woman of normal capabilities, wouldn't have her head blown off within five minutes of stepping across the border. You don't dwell on this for long, however, because French filmmaker Elie Chouraqui skillfully broadens the scope of the story so that MacDowell isn't forced to carry the movie on her exquisite shoulders.

It's hard, too, to dwell on much of anything outside of the horrors so realistically depicted here by Chouraqui, who's aided superbly by cinematographer Nicola Pecorini and production designer Giantito Burchiellaro. This team has turned the movie's shooting locales near Prague into an acrid place of desolation, thoroughly believable and utterly terrifying. It's impossible not to be engrossed by the movie's atmosphere of doom.

The late introduction of another rescuer is improbable, and the character's voice-over narration is distracting, since it comes out of nowhere. The ending, too, feels false, almost as if Chouraqui felt the need to give the audience members a bit of uplift after all the savagery that he had put them through. But it's that very savagery - not its love-can-conquer-all theme - that makes ``Harrison's Flowers'' worth picking.

HARRISON'S FLOWERS - Three stars

(Rated R: strong war violence and gruesome images, pervasive language, brief drug use)

Starring: Andie MacDowell, Brendan Gleeson, Adrien Brody, David Strathairn.

Director: Elie Chouraqui.

Running time: 2 hr. 2 min.

Playing: Cineplex Odeon Universal 18 in Universal City; AMC Burbank 14; AMC Century 14 in Century City; Crest Theater in Westwood; Beverly Cineplex 13 in Los Angeles; Hollywood Galaxy 6; Cineplex Odeon 4 in Santa Monica.

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Elias Koteas helps Andie MacDowell look for her husband in ``Harrison's Flowers.''