A Mighty Heart (2007)

"A Might Heart" is never dull, never less than moving and always earnest in its emotions and portrayal of politics and religious red tape in post-9/11 Pakistan, but it's also rushed and confusing.

It tells the story of Daniel Pearl, the "Wall Street Journalist" kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in 2002 as he set out to interview a (false) source. Angelina Jolie is Marianne, the wife of Daniel (Daniel Flutterman), who was beheaded in an infamous filmed action that burned through the Web more than five years ago.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom, the film is journalistic in its portrayal of the events leading up to and after the kidnapping. The politics and religious ramifications run deep -- most of the Pakistani officials seem worried about their reputations or dumping on neighbor India than finding Pearl -- and can be deeply confusing (putting on the subtitles helps), but that may be the point. In America, we live in a country that to most of the world must be in its horrible teenage years.

The political/religious/racial confusion is not the fault of the film, but are of our (my) lack of knowledge of the region. Much as we're told, America is not the center of the Earth. On location filing in Pakistan is the core reason this film succeeds, there's not much of a false note here and everything seems real. The poverty and chaos depicted in just a few minutes on screen open a door to a world I didn't know about prior. That's the beauty of film.

Jolie is great as Marriane, although one never forgets you're watching Angelina Jolie in an Important Role. She's lost that unknown quality. That may be the fault of tabloids more than the art on display here. But it hurts the film nonetheless. B