Film

Any film about Daniel Pearl's death risks charges of exploitation, but Winterbottom's adaptation of Mariane Pearl's memoir remembers the Wall Street Journal reporter in what might be the most productive manner possible: The movie is an ode to the difficulty of being a journalist in a part of the world where journalists have no support. It takes true bravery to schedule meetings with terrorists and their sympathizers; to wander into cars not knowing where you'll be driven; and to have conversations with those who hate your nationality, religion or profession.

A unique police procedural, the narrative is a thicket of conflicting accounts. After Pearl (Futterman) is kidnapped, every official is quick to claim that the situation is under control. Misinformation travels quickly—both among the investigators (who spread a premature report that Pearl's body has been found) and the terrorists. As is noted toward the end, to the kidnappers it might really have seemed as though Pearl was a CIA spy.

Unfolding primarily from Mariane's perspective, the movie is twinged with an inevitable sentimentality. But as Mariane, Jolie—frantically calling nonworking numbers, maintaining an unlikely poise on CNN—holds the film's center with surprising gravity. In a way, A Mighty Heart seems even more eye-opening than Winterbottom’s 2006 documentary The Road to Guantanamo; the communication problems that plagued the Pearl case have hardly been addressed. An overconfident federal agent (Patton) proves to be one of the least reliable characters. According to the closing titles, he’s in Iraq.