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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

Filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s work “A Mighty Heart” breaks your heart for what it might have been. Based on one of the worst atrocities committed in the war against terrorism, this film adaptation of Mariane Pearl’s memoir of her journalist husband Daniel Pearl and his execution in 2002 by an Islamic extremist feels disappointingly bloodless in its documentary style rendition of the events surrounding the kidnapping, search for and mourning of Pearl.

There are few viewers of the movie who will not know of the gruesome outcome of the disappearance of the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia Bureau Chief who was pursuing leads for a story about shoe bomber Richard Reid. Pearl’s murder was filmed and eventually broadcast throughout the world through the internet. Mariane rightly wanted people to know more about her husband than the brutality of his beheading.

But, Winterbottom’s adaptation of the memoir, whether for economy’s sake, or general interest’s sake, focuses for the most part on the intense and anguished gathering of information about Danny’s whereabouts and the persons responsible, in an effort to rescue him or secure his release.

As it becomes clear to a pregnant Mariane (Angelina Jolie), herself a journalist, that her husband is in mortal danger (his captors accuse him of being CIA, of being part of Israel’s Mossad), her training in fact gathering and analysis helps her maintain a sense of control, of hope.

Huddled around computers, talking into cell phones, writing on a large dry erase board of names and organizations that might have a connection to the crime, Mariane and the others working on the case follow every lead, question every e-mail, evaluate every photo. The demand is made: exchange Danny for political prisoners detained in Guantanamo.

The U.S. is troubled by the kidnapping and sends FBI counter intelligence agents to help. Mariane makes a televised plea for Danny’s release (“I never saw him tell a lie”).

A meeting with the Pakistani Interior Minister does not go well. He accuses Danny of “embarrassing” Pakistan with his pursuit of his story. Danny’s kidnappers are identified as members of the National Movement for Restoration of Pakistan Sovereignty. A story hits the media that Danny’s body has been found, shot many times. Through it all, images of her life with Danny, of her last sight of him, and the memory of the last time she heard his voice on the cell phone she keeps with her in bed, hoping against hope that she will hear his voice again,. All this sustain Mariane to the bitter end, when a video is delivered.

Much violence, pain, suffering and loss have happened in the intervening five years since Pearl’s death. Names, dates, places associated with the Iraq insurgency and the deaths of U.S. soldiers are what are on most people’s minds today. They know next to nothing about Pakistan’s connection to the events immediately following 9/11. So, the action that takes place in the story in the streets of various cities of Pakistan and the characters connected to it have little chance to mean anything to the viewer.

The man that is being so frantically and fervently searched for in the movie is never real for the viewer. Who was Daniel Pearl and what made his heart mighty?

One thing is clear. Mariane’s love for him made it mighty. But, it would have been more of a tribute to Danny if we could have been shown that his integrity and gift as a journalist made his heart mighty, too.

A Paramount Vantage release, rated R for language.
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