Richard Gere and director and writer Richard Shepard have been talking about Spring Break in Bosnia, their new film that looks at the story of two journalists who head into Bosnia near the end of the war believing they can hunt down a highly dangerous war criminal. The war criminal mistakes them for a CIA hit squad and turns the tables on them.

At a recent press event Gere and Shepard spoke about the film through The Scotsman:

"I hope it's asking a bigger question why there are war criminals ... that the world says they want to catch but they don't," Shepard said in Sarajevo..."We say we want to catch these people, but are there other things in play that might mean that we really don't want to catch them?...Osama bin Laden is the most wanted criminal in the world with the largest bounty on his head. Some may question if people have a true interest to catch him,"

Gere seconded those thoughts and then answered the question of who would be playing the war criminal in the film through Jam Movies:

"It's a question that is asked a lot: Why aren't these guys found?...

...It's safe to say that it's not Julia Roberts"

Interestingly this is based on a true story. Taken from an article written by Scott Anderson of Esquire who wrote about his involvement with five journalists from America, Belgium and Holland, who went in search for Radovan Karadzic and the U.S. $5 million reward. When they thought they had very solid leads from a U.N. Officer and his Serb contact, American troops intervened and told them that "specialists" would take over. Karadzic was never caught and nothing was heard about this again. Anderson speculated that the lead was closed down deliberately as capturing this criminal would further raise tension in the region.

It's an interesting tale, and with Terence Howard starring alongside Gere, it sounds as if it will retain a strong focus on the direction of the original material.