A Mighty Heart

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A Mighty Heart

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A Mighty Heart

Adnan Siddiqui, Alyy Khan, Angelina Jolie, Archie Panjabi, Dan Futterman, Irfan Khan, Will Patton

On January 23, 2002, Mariane Pearl's world changed forever. Her husband Daniel, South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, was researching a story on shoe bomber Richard Reid. The story drew...( read more  read more... ) them to Karachi where a go-between had promised access to an elusive source. As Danny left for the meeting, he told Mariane he might be late for dinner. He never returned. In the face of death, Danny's spirit of defiance and his unflinching belief in the power of journalism led Mariane to write about his disappearance, the intense effort to find him and his eventual murder in her memoir "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl." Six months pregnant when the ordeal began, she was carrying a son that Danny hoped to name Adam. She wrote the book to introduce Adam to the father he would never meet. Transcending religion, race and nationality, Mariane's courageous desire to rise above the bitterness and hatred that continues to plague this post 9/11 world, serves as the purest expression of the joy of life she and Danny shared.

Id: 10890449

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A Mighty Heart Recent Reviews
  • MovieGeek13
    March 19, 2009
    MovieGeek13
    Michael Winterbottom is one of today's most underrated filmmakers, and this film is a work of extraordinary power. Angelina Jolie gives her best performance to date.
  • her69eyes
    January 18, 2009
    her69eyes
    "A Mighty Heart" tells the story of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped in Pakistan and beheaded on camera in early 2002. His wife, Mariane Pearl, wrote a book following the death, "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl",...( read more) which is the source material for the film. Because we're following Mariane's struggle, Daniel's final days remain a mystery. It's a great decision of director Michael Winterbottom, too, as i'm not sure showing those moments would make the audience feel any more secure. We know how the film is going to end, and it makes us sick throughout the entirety of it. The writer, director, and actors all treat the story with a great deal of respect, however it's still material that's hard to watch. However, I think that the film, besides being commemorative of a horrible tragedy, does it's best to remain hopeful in showcasing the heroic efforts of a loving wife searching for her husband.

    The film follows Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie), who waits patiently for the rescue of her husband. For being in such a grim situation, she remains remarkably composed. It's not until the key moment of the film, which was criticized for being "Oscar bait", that Pearl finally breaks. In Mariane's book, she paints this moment vividly: "I can feel that I'm screaming, but the sound that rips up out of me is alien, as if everything is coming out of me". It's not until you read that quote that you appreciate what Jolie did. Although the film is rather uninvolving, that payoff is as emotionally draining as you can get. It's raw, gritty, and wrenching - the culmination of over an hour's worth of grief. It's said often: people forget Jolie's talents as an actress because of her tabloid fame. While she's not always involved with the best material, her screen presence is never anything short of intense.

    Daniel is played by Dan Futterman, who was the screenwriter for the brilliant "Capote". His part here is rather minimal, but effective. We see Daniel now and then in photographs and flashbacks, but thankfully Winterbottom never tries to recreate Pearl's fate on screen. The marriage between Daniel and Marianne does seem rather idealized on the surface, but when you consider the amount of passion Marianne displayed in the investigation and her subsequent book, it's not hard to imagine that they did get along that well. I wasn't too fond of the flashbacks in the film, however, as these scenes didn't make me feel the connection between the couple any better than Jolie's performance did. Jolie's showcase of determination and hope should've been more than enough to illustrate the love between Daniel and Marianne.

    We're introduced to a lot of people on the case throughout the film, and the web of suspects does grow rather large. Winterbottom apparently knows this darn well, so Marianne frequently attends to a whiteboard in order to help us sort out everything. It's a simple device, but it makes a world of difference in trying to follow along with the story. Of the supporting cast, perhaps the character the audience will connect to most is "Captain" (Irrfan Khan, from "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Namesake"), Pakistan's head of counter-terrorism. I suspect the dramatic material might have been more involving if told from his perspective, however it may have underplayed Mariane's remarkable story.

    The problem with "A Mighty Heart" is the procedural narrative that forgets to examine the inner workings of these characters. It's like a lot of these cop drama/thrillers - there's a suspect, they go after him, there's another, and they go after him. We already know how the story is going to end, so there's already a handicap that's going to suspend the tension for audience members, but the major problem is that we're kept emotionally distant in the process of getting there. The film comes off as rather cold and almost tedious, but thankfully Jolie (as well as Khan and Futterman) lend a hand in making things more interesting. Jolie, in particular, plays a Mariane that's incredibly inspirational. As an investigative drama, this really didn't work, but as the tale of a devoted wife, it achieves some mild success.
  • LauralyBeautiful
    August 18, 2008
    LauralyBeautiful
    The most boring movie I've seen all year. I'm still happy to have seen it, but how long did they have to make this? If not for Angelina Jolie, this would never have interested anyone in the general public.
  • EarthlyAlien
    August 8, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    "And kidnappers - their point is to terrorize people. But *I* am not terrorized, and *you* can't be terrorized."

    A Mighty Heart wasn't an easy film to make this film work. Some stories don't need - or at least shouldn't need - to be put into a film to get its messa...( read more)ge across. Unfortunely, these days most do, so... to tell a story worth telling, such as A Mighty Heart's, in the end never be considered condemnable.

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    Even though I'm sure many people hadn't even heard of Mariane Pearl until the word was out that she would be played by Angelina Jolie, her story isn't new to anyone who watches the news. It was 5 years ago. Mariane's husband, Wall Street Journal American and Jewish-born reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), on assignment in Karachi, Pakistan, vanished as he followed a promising tip which he expected to lead to a face-to-face interview with Sheik Mubarak Ali Gilani (Ikram Bhatti), a religious figure rumoured to be behind assorted al-Qaeda operations, including shoe bomber Richard Reid's aborted plot to bring down an airliner over the Atlantic. Such meeting would turn out to be a trap and Pearl kidnapped and eventually executed.

    With some elements of a political thriller, the film focuses essentially on the widow's personal point of view, after all the film is based on her best-selling memoir. Mariane's five infernal weeks are the core of the film. Angelina Jolie, in the greatest performance of her career since Girl, Interrupted, is the heart and soul of A Mighty Heart, taking us on a journey of anguish, torment and vulnerability. Parallelly to Mariane's struggle, we follow the investigation into Pearl's disappearance. Winterbottom creates a breathtaking and surprisingly thrilling (considering the fact that the outcome is already known) procedural that rests largely on the passionate but ultimately impotent Pakistani police chief (a terrific performance by Irfan Khan).

    Michael Winterbottom was the only man who could direct this film. As simple as that. If any other filmmaker (especially American) had gotten his hands on this script (by John Orloff( first, the result would certainly be disastrous. His objective, sometimes cold way to tell stories, allied with the humanity he manages to inject in them, makes him perfect for the job. Just like he did with In This World and The Road to Guantanamo, both extremely political films who happen to deal with the most important issue of today's global scene - the apparently never-ending conflict between the U.S. and the Middle East - he never takes sides, even dealing with such a delicate subject as terrorism. Tells the story he's supposed to, doesn't hide anything, but never adopts a 'Pro' neither an 'Anti' American approach while doing so. Few other filmmakers could achieve that.

    Using the tools of documentary filmmakers and cinéma vérité (lots of-hand-held camera work, the sense that there's been limited editing, and plenty of natural, often overlapping sound), he gives the film the sense of realism it needed. Far from the brilliance of his previous works, but still an important film with an important message - of tolerance and incentive to dialogue - that also serves as a tribute to one of the most originally noble professions that ever existed - the one of Journalist.
  • JakeMN
    June 2, 2008
    JakeMN
    The storyline is excellent and the acting is pretty good. I didn't like how the movie was put together, it wasn't as emotionally convincing as it could be. Overall it was good though.
  • Phonex
    November 4, 2009
    Phonex
    For all of its good intentions, A Mighty Heart is Michael Winterbottom's weakest film for some time. It was no real surprise that Angelina Jolie handpicked the prolific Englishman for the job as two of his recent films - In This World and The Road to Guantanamo - showed that he i...( read more)s one of the few working directors to tackle the complex issue of modern terrorism head-on. But here however he is in something of a directorial strait jacket, encumbered by the source material and appeasing the world's most famous actress.
  • jimbotender
    October 22, 2009
    jimbotender
    Michael,please don't react with your heart next time,I know you have studio ambitions to project yourself more to this awful Academy,nevertheless...reach out for significant events,CNN tabloids are off fashion...
    Even so,Jolie's and Khan's skills overshadow the elliptic montage o...( read more)f a picture that could have offered more.
  • Nawya
    October 15, 2009
    Nawya
    Dobar film po istinitoj prici. Dinamican, zapetljan. Uvijek dobra Angelina.
  • chicken2402
    October 10, 2009
    chicken2402
    Touching, but... I can't see what all the fuss is about.
  • ermitamangkona
    October 5, 2009
    ermitamangkona
    undeniably, justifiably, and realistically a solid good movie
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