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A Mighty Heart

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

I wasn't looking forward to A Mighty Heart, a movie about a news story I vaguely remember, with a title that brings back too many memories of the syrupy emptiness of A Beautiful Mind. It turns out my fears were unfounded; A Mighty Heart is not a vapid life-affirming drama, like some ads make it seem, but rather a fully engrossing thriller.

And I really mean engrossing. Most movies you follow with general interest but are only too quick to forget on the trip home. I followed A Mighty Heart all the way through its sometimes Byzantine plot and was eager to learn even more about it once the film ended. It’s fast-paced and shot in the style of a docudrama (the director, Michael Winterbottom, is a veteran of documentaries), and while plenty of facts go over your head before you can grab them, you actually want to go back and re-watch the film to see what else you can learn.

The key, I think, is that the main characters are in the same boat we are – they’re just trying to figure out what’s going on, and their desire to do so pulls us through the film.

The time is January 2002. Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) and his wife Mariane (Angelina Jolie), both journalists, are temporarily staying in Karachi, Pakistan. In the process of doing research for a story on the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, Daniel arranges a meeting with Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, a militant Pakistani cleric. He leaves for the meeting, which he arranged to take place in public, but never returns. When Mariane can’t get a hold of him, she correctly assumes the worst.

What follows is the hunt for Daniel undertaken by Mariane, their friends at the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. FBI, and the Pakistani police force and newly formed Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS).

The acting is across-the-board terrific. The standout of course is Jolie, who really does affirm her status as one of the best actresses working today with a flawless performance. While Mariane’s actual contribution to the search for Daniel is minimal, the fact that the film chooses to center on her never seems wrong-headed. Aside from the fact that the film is based on the real-life Mariane’s book, she’s the perfect choice because she’s the strongest emotional attachment to Daniel. The film balances its plot-heaviness and documentary style with Mariane front and center as the human core, which gives the film a uniquely sturdy balance.

Besides, Mariane is hardly an emotional wreck throughout the film – she is revealed to be a strong and astonishingly capable woman (going through all this, by the way, well into a pregnancy), ...