A Mighty Heart

2/4

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Irrfan Khan, Archie Panjabi, Will Patton, Dan Futterman

Rated R for Language

Despite what the major studios and wannabe "hip" filmmakers (like Paul McGuigan, whose "style" ruined films like "The Reckoning" and "Lucky Number Slevin") would have you think, the most important part of a movie is the script.  Without a good script, your movie is sunk.  A powerful story can be rendered inert by a poor script, and that's what happens here.  True, Michael Winterbottom's style does little to help the film, but the main flaws are with the script.

The film details the experiences of Mariane Pearl (Jolie), the wife of Daniel Pearl (Futterman), the journalist who was kidnapped and brutally murdered by terrorists while working in Pakistan.  Shortly after the September 11th attacks, Danny and Mariane (who works as a journalist for French Public Radio) went to Pakistan.  The day before they were to leave, Daniel was heading to one final interview, but that was the last time that anyone saw him.  Mariane has little choice but to wait and pray that her husband will be returned to her alive.  Unfortunately, as we all know, that was not to be.

There is a fundamental flaw in telling stories where the ending is common knowledge.  After all, what's the point of watching a mystery when someone already has given away the ending?  Films like "Boys Don't Cry" and "Monster" work because they are not simply biopics, but character studies.  "Valkyrie," which is a film that is more similar to "A Mighty Heart," works because the film understood that the audience knows that the plot is going to fail; the tension came from how close they came to pulling it off and how they were going to react once they realized the plot failed.  Had "A Mighty Heart" been told in a similar fashion, it (might) have worked, but for some reason Winterbottom seems to think that no one in the audience would have known about Pearl's murder prior to viewing the film.  I know, I know, Americans prefer junk news and social commentators to true reporting (or at least that's what most people think, myself included), but still.  Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and death was not an obscure event.  Such underestimation by Winterbottom is fatal to the film.

On top of that, the film suffers from Winterbottom's detached style and the messy script.  Winterbottom directs the film almost like a documentary.  In some cases, this can make a film more intimate (see "Chronicle" or "Paranormal Activity" for good examples).  This is not one of those instances.  It distances us from the characters, and because Winterbottom cuts between various storylines and has many random establishing shots and flashbacks, it's impossible to truly care about anyone.

The script is all over the place.  This is a complex story, to be sure, but with stronger writing, the story could have been told more clearly (less kinetic direction from Winterbottom could only have helped matters).  It's so bad that apart from a few characters who camp out at Mariane's home, I had no idea who anyone was, which caused the film to make little sense at times.

Whatever problems the film has, let no one claim that Angelina Jolie's performance is one of them.  Jolie, an actress known mainly for her beauty and charity work, is peerless as Mariane.  She's tough and independent, and she won't show her agony in front of anyone else.  Jolie not only gets the character's accent down but her mannerisms and personality.  The scene where she reacts to the news of Daniel's death is heartbreaking because of her.  Reliable support is given by British actress Archie Panjabi and the irreplacable Irrfan Khan. The only flaw in the cast is Will Patton.  Both badly written and acted, Patton's Randall Bennett is a obvious irritant whenever he shows up.

It's sad, really, that this film is so heavily flawed.  Jolie's work is wonderful and it deserves to be seen.  Jolie's performance as Mariane deserves a much better movie.