CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 06/22/07

Tragedy Over Triumph

By peter clines

A Mighty Heart

John Orloff
Based off the memoirs of Mariane Pearl

Journalist Danny Pearl (Dan Futterman, screenwriter for Capote) leaves his home in Karachi, Pakistan for a meeting with an informant and is abducted by a terrorist group. His pregnant wife, Mariane (Angelina Jolie), works with the American consulate, the FBI, the Pakistani CID, and her fellow journalists to follow every lead and clue they can, hoping to track down the kidnappers before the announced deadline of Danny's execution. Based off the true story of the Pearls, as told in Mariane's self-named memoir, A Mighty Heart is in no way a bad script, but it's also hard to call it a good one. The characters are strong, the dialogue true, but the story screenwriter John Orloff (Band of Brothers) tells is, at heart, just another kidnapping. The investigation isn't all that different from one we'd see on CSI or Law & Order, and even some of the other characters comment on the fact that Mariane remains oddly unfazed by her husband's abduction. Moreover, the truncated ending focuses the film far more on the tragedy of Danny Pearl rather than the triumph of Mariane overcoming that tragedy. While this story has made for several powerful documentaries, as a fictionalized film it's somewhat lacking.

A Mighty Heart
Paramount Vantage
Rated R; 103 min.

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Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

A Mighty Heart courtesy Paramount Vantage

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