In A Mighty Heart, Angelina Jolie portrays Marianne Pearl, journalist wife of Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded on tape (to just say murdered doesn't really cover the outrage) by self-proclaimed Islamist nutjobs in Pakistan in 2002. Going into the movie I was expecting it to be serious and heartrending -- it is --
but I didn't expect such a well-paced drama and realistic portrait of prickly Marianne and the people who helped her during the search for Danny. Director Michael Winterbottom delivers a documentary feel to the story that is so compelling, one finds oneself hoping for Danny's return -- you feel very in the moment with the Pakistani police and intelligence service and the American consulate people and Journal representatives as they scramble to find him in the chaos of Karachi, a large pre- and postmodern port city in Pakistan. The movie conveys very well the constant motion, occasional charm, and -- it's true -- sense of menace of the crowded streets, full of cars and cell phones and donkeys and ... it all feels very Blade Runner, if you can picture that.
People heap Angelina Jolie with all kinds of crap for her choices in life and movies; it's bull. She is a very good actress (and I have no opinion on her skills as a mother or UN representative) and puts her face -- which she knows people will follow -- to good use illuminating some of our world's darker and more desperate corners. Here she gives a brave performance as Marianne -- making her vulnerable, tough, alternately kind and unlikeable, a bit of a bitch and control freak, pregnant and struggling with a horrible, incomprehensible experience in an alien society, and trying throughout to maintain some grace. She is so believable, and the documentary style along with the solid performances of the other actors are so convincing, that you forget it's a drama of something that's already happened. When the news arrives that Danny is dead, it hits you in the gut just like it hits Marianne, and with her you weep -- not just for her husband, but for the values of civilization itself.