Angelina Jolie critic Peter Stack wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble." She won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review. In 1999, Jolie starred in the comedy-drama "Pushing Tin", alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. The film met with mixed reception from critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized; writing for "The Washington Post", Desson Howe dismissed her as "a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of
Angelina Jolie attention to humanitarian causes. "Beyond Borders" was a critical failure; Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" acknowledged Jolie's ability to "bring electricity and believability to roles," but wrote that "the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her." The year 2004 saw the release of four films featuring Jolie. She first starred in the thriller "Taking Lives" as an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The film received mixed reviews; "The Hollywood Reporter" critic Kirk Honeycutt concluded, "Jolie plays a role that