A Mighty Heart: Movie Review (2007)

Michael Winterbottom’s "A Mighty Heart" stars Angelina Jolie in a performance that reminds us that the longtime tabloid fixture is more than just the Third World’s Santa Angelina, Brad Pitt’s main squeeze and, to some, a serial adopter of children.

She’s a woman who can act, and while she hasn’t done much of that since winning the Academy Award for 1999’s "Girl, Interrupted," that she does so here helps to atone for a number of sins, though not, it must be said, 2001’s "Original Sin," a tawdry scrap of soft-core porn that perhaps will be remembered most for so enthusiastically reaching out to the "Emmanuel" crowd.

Here, the actress portrays the pregnant journalist Mariane Pearl, who in 2002 was in Karachi, Pakistan, with her husband, The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), to investigate shoe bomber Richard Reid through an interview with the elusive Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani. What ensued was a weeks-long nightmare when Danny was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and then, after a formidable effort to save him, beheaded on videotape.

As with any devastating, real-life story whose outcome is well-known going into it — and as with any star whose fame is so great, it threatens to detract from material that demands, above all else, respect, strength and subtlety — Jolie, Winterbottom and screenwriter John Orloff had a challenge ahead of them, and they met it head on.

In lesser hands, "A Mighty Heart" could have collapsed into a ripe pool of sentiment. For example, it could have been turned into one of those television soap operas in which the truth is morphed to serve a sap-loving demographic.

Not so here. With the exception of a brutal and well-earned scene of uncontainable grief, which is so beautifully handled by Jolie, it alone might win her an Academy Award nomination, "A Mighty Heart" looks at the world and the Pearls’ situation through the eyes of a journalist. It doesn’t wince, it doesn’t exploit — it just observes, which is enough.

What it sees is the moment — not the periphery, only the core — with the moment itself heightened by Peter Christelis’ quick-cut editing and Marcel Zyskind’s whiplash cinematography. Backed by the grimy chaos of Karachi itself, with its teeming throngs of people and commerce bearing down on a city that no longer can contain them, each assists the film in keeping audiences reasonably distracted from the outcome that eventually must come.

Leading up to it, Jolie holds her body inward, fixating on the news as it leaks in, while Winterbottom gives us only brief glimpses into her and Danny’s life together before this event worked to undo it. The flashbacks are the film at its weakest — they’re too beatific — but for so many other reasons, namely Jolie’s excellent performance, it’s easy enough to move beyond them as we’re hurtled toward the inevitable end.

And yet here’s the thing. We’ve all seen movies in which we know the ending going into it, but how many of us, after bonding with characters we either come to respect or love, hope that ending might somehow turn out differently onscreen?

Movies have long since fooled us that they have the potential for creating absolute change, and so it’s a testament to "A Mighty Heart" that mid-way through, you find yourself pulling for Pearl to break free. Of course, he doesn’t, but in that unrealistic moment when it flashes across your mind, all that was lost in those moments that proceed his death and Jolie’s unnerving wail of rage and sadness work to evaporate summer’s hot blast of air with one remarkably cutting chill.

Grade: A-