A Mighty Heart

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

The true story of the search for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is given an almost documentary-like treatment, despite the presence of Angelina Jolie, who subtly and beautifully underplays Pearl's distraught but determined wife (and fellow journalist), Mariane. Even though it is based on the well-known 2002 tragic events that happened in post-9/11 Pakistan, it plays like an edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller. Your heart pounds as you watch this story meticulously unfold under Michael Winterbottom's expert direction. Focusing less on Pearl's abduction (we never see the infamous video showing the results of his beheading), the film follows the international effort and race against the clock to find him, and makes its points well that if the terrorists who planned this crime were hoping to divide people they only succeeded in bringing disparate countries together in bringing them to justice. Shot on actual locations, A Mighty Heart stands apart as a powerful, provocative, and spellbinding film, a major motion picture achievement that also shows the unique love story between the Pearls. She was pregnant at the time; and the birth of the son he would never see serves as a legacy to Daniel, just as Winterbottom's movie version (based on Mariane's own book) also does. Jolie gives the performance of her career as Mariane, expressing a wave of emotions and brilliantly weaving between anger, fierce determination, hope, love, heartbreak, and renewal. This is a movie not to be missed, and one that will be a force come Oscar time.

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