Lately Sandra has been able to get free tickets to screenings of yet to be released movies. This one is the first one I’ve gone to. I’m not sure how they select which movies come up on offer but I’m not gonna say no to a free movie despite how little I know about it! Tonight’s movie was A Mighty Heart.

Daniel Pearl was a Wall Street journalist who was kidnapped and brutally executed by Islamic fundamentalists in Karachi, Pakiston. A Mighty Heart is an adaptation of a memoir by his widow Mariane Pearl and takes us through her nightmare of the weeks leading up to his execution. Throughout the movie Mariane, who is nearly full term pregnant, stoically maintains her composure while assembling a group of friends and colleagues to find him. The only moment that she totally looses it is when she finally finds out her husband is dead. And not just dead but beheaded and chopped into ten pieces. This is not a happy story kids.

Angelina Jolie as Mariane is simply amazing as Mariane Pearl. Its easy to put aside all the recent press about Jolie’s personal life and remember that actually she is a decent actress. She totally embraces and becomes Mariane. Truly compelling.

Interestingly the film does not paint the evils of the terrorists themselves although clearly they are bad guys in the film. Instead the focus seems to be on the chaos and confusion of international communication lines from the respective government perspectives to the media reporting and also the importance of hope, however futile, in the face of such loss.

The movie’s only downfall I think is in living up to the title – A Mighty Heart. Sure Jolie’s character is generally a pillar of strength throughout the film but because the movie is for the most part emotion-less you don’t get the true sense of how much pain Mariane Pearl had to work through to overcome what would ordinarily be the automatic feeling of total hatred of her husband’s executioners.