Usually when a little movie appears in the middle of summer, they provide a nice alternative to the usual big budget summer offerings, but this movie just feels badly placed. A movie dealing with terrorism in a very raw, real and intense way does not belong in the middle of June. It belongs towards the end of the year when it can get the buzz it deserves for its actors and its story. For those of you who don't know the story allow me to quickly recap for you. Mariane Pearl is a journalist for a free radio station and her husband Daniel Pearl works for the Wall Street Journal. They have spent the post 9/11 months in parts of the Middle East covering various aspects of war, terror and the overall feelings of these countries. The day before they are set to return to the states Daniel has one last interview but he never returns. Mariane is pregnant and trying to keep it together as the F.B.I, C.I.A, Pakistani government, Pakistani military and Pakistani police all gather together trying to find him. At first they have no idea what is going on but they start to get e-mails from the kidnappers featuring pictures of Daniel bound at gunpoint. The kidnappers say they will mistreat him the way American prisons (like Guantanamo bay) are mistreating possible terrorists. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that Pearl was targeted and not just a random American kidnap victim. The Terrorist Pakistanis believe Pearl to actually be working for the C.I.A. The story mostly follows Mariane's attempt to solve this case, but woven in are scenes of the Pakistani police force utilizing their scare tactics to find out who is behind this. It is also told in a non-linear fashion as we get flashbacks to earlier in the week, earlier the day he is kidnapped and Mariane has flashbacks to happy times in the marriage.
Angelina Jolie is Mariane Pearl and she is outstanding. It is always nice to see why someone got famous int he first place. So often we forget some of these tabloid subjects are actually incredibly talented when they choose good material. Gone is wanna be action star Angelina Jolie. She is replaced by a Jolie who acts with her entire body but mostly relying on her face to express an intense sadness or an intense warmth as she remembers her husband. Pearl was pregnant at the time of this and so it adds a certain uneasy element as we watch Pearl try to hold it all together in fear that if she lets go something bad could happen to the child. Dan Futterman plays Daniel whom we mostly see in flashbacks and while he isn't on screen much he gives a very earnest honest portrayal of a journalist, not a tabloid reporter but a real journalist. Everyone else is solid in the movie but the other stand out to me was Archie Panjabi. She played a friend and colleague of the two reporters and she carried the brunt of the emotional load because Mariane had that pregnancy.
This is a movie with a lot of themes- journalism as a noble art, the differences between American and Pakistani police force, terrorism, love, loyalty- are captured in stark fashion as the movie is filmed in sort of a documentary form, using a hand held camera often shoved right in the faces of the actors. It is mostly effective although during the few moments of action it becomes difficult to tell who on is whose side because the camera start to only capture blurry figures crossing the screen.
Sadly this does not have a very happy ending as Daniel was beheaded and since this is a very honest movie not interested in cheap thrills we never see it. We only see the reactions on the faces of those who have seen it (a very effective method). After his death Mariane, ever the journalist would not put blame on an entire country like a reporter baited her to do, she just told the world she loved her husband very much and even as I type this it fills me with a morose sense of happiness that this woman could rise above the pettiness so many of us would feel. A reporter also had the nerve to ask her if she had watched the tape which is just disgusting but not out of the realm of something a TV reporter would do as our country thrives on that sort of voyeuristic sense of life. Jolie plays Pearl's one major breakdown a bit over the top, but imagine it is how anyone would react if they had been holding in the obvious pain for a few months. The camera only catches glimpses of her as she screams and cries and as i watched those around me, everyone was fully engrossed and fully emotional. It is sad that this movie is being plopped into the summer where people do not want something so heavy but please please please pick this up when it comes out on DVD.
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