A Mighty Heart

A Mighty Heart (Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irfan Khan, Archie Panjabi) — Powerful and superbly acted, this story of the abduction and subsequent murder of journalist Danny Pearl (Futterman of Judging Amy) moves you in a way few movies you already know the ending of will. Set in Karachi, Pakistan, the story centers on Pearl’s wife, Mariane Pearl (Jolie), a French-born journalist of Cuban and Dutch ancestry. Pregnant and fearless, she watches her husband leave to do an interview with a dangerous Pakistani leader.  When he doesn’t return, she enlists friends and the police to find Danny.  This relentless pursuit creates a taut drama that you know will fail, but along the way it educates you and actually builds hope.  It’s like watching a movie about the Kennedy assassination where you know what happens but realize it could have been avoided.  Angelina is just superb and you can tell she spent a lot of time with Mariane to get the character just right.  In interviews, the wife appears cool and collected – maybe too much – but when she finds out that her husband is really dead, she screams in such a primal and vicious way that you want to scream “shut up, get over it.”  But you realize that she saved all the stress for this one moment, allowing her to move on, have her baby and lead the Danny Pearl Foundation. It hasn’t done much box office, but this is a movie worth seeing as soon as you can.  It gives you a real feel for the senselessness and bigotry of sectarian violence.  This man, whose sin was that he was born a Jew, was Al Qaeda’s symbol for the hatred of the west.  Mariane’s quest represents humanity’s resilience against evil.