Comment on this story Send this story to a friend There's a shaky sense of danger to "A Mighty Heart," an ever-present acknowledgment of the fragile state of things. It's reflected in everything from the abduction at the film's center to life's seeming incidentals -- crying children, cars that won't start, information that doesn't add up. The movie is infused with jitteriness, a constant reminder that peace, contentment, safety all are illusion in the modern world.
It's based on the true kidnapping and eventual execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was grabbed in 2002 while tracking down a source in Karachi, Pakistan. But Pearl (played by Dan Futterman) isn't the real subject of the movie. He's a ghost, actually, since his eventual death by beheading is common knowledge, and he appears mostly in flashbacks.
A victim of his own curiosity and confidence, the tragedy of Pearl's death instead becomes incentive for director Michael Winterbottom's devastating portrait of crushed hope, fruitless investigation and cultural dissonance. The result is a film about a world in which Daniel Pearl could be kidnapped and killed, a world most Americans never have to confront, and the mean wake of effects that follow such a maddening, pointless act of terrorism Angelina Jolie has the central role of Mariane Pearl, Daniel's freelance reporter wife, who was far along in pregnancy when he was grabbed. A French woman in Pakistan searching for her Jewish-American husband in the noisy chaos of a churning big city, she is surrounded by the irrefutable corruption and complexity of a foreign land, and turns every which way she can for help, only to find frustration as her husband's fate becomes a political football.
She has the support of the American government, her husband's powerful newspaper, his parents back in the states and all manner of local humanitarians, but they prove consistently useless when faced with the tangled web of religious and political factions stacked atop one another in the Muslim world. Strings of information lead off in fruitless directions, witnesses disappear then reappear, nothing ever seems solid. Winterbottom wisely moves the action away from Mariane a good deal of the time, hitting the streets with hand-held cameras as the Pakistani cop simply known as Captain (the excellent Irffan Khan, the father in "The Namesake") tears his city apart.
This guy does not care about anybody's bill of rights, and he doesn't seem to give a damn about anybody's politics; he's the classic driven cop out to do the right thing, just doing it in an environment that makes even the most out-of-control American city seem comparatively calm. Winterbottom has a history of dealing with harsh international reality (the documentary "The Road to Guantanamo," "Welcome to Sarajevo"), and he excels at capturing the minor sounds and moments that make up the tone of a time and place. Motorbikes buzz by Pearl's residence, phones ring, accents overlap, indistinct faces drift in and out of focus while walking down a street: It all contributes to a feeling of pressing presence that is undeniable.
Jolie's performance continuously drives home just how grim and real and tense the situation is, but she never falls back on easy sentiment. Mariane is almost painfully contained -- she's sure she can solve all this and keeps pressing forward even when she's going nowhere -- until she finds out she's failed. At this point, Angelina Jolie may be the most famous woman alive, and she's certainly one of the most beautiful.
But she still manages to lose herself within Pearl, delivering what's sure to be one of the year's best performances. And indeed, "A Mighty Heart" should end up one of the year's best dramas, an intricate, jolting look at life out of control and one woman's fight to hold onto her dignity and love in the midst of unimaginable tragedy. It's not an easy story to watch.
Imagine living it. You can reach Tom Long at (313) 222-8879 or tlong@detnews.com.
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