A Mighty Heart - Blu Ray Review

The key with "A Mighty Heart" is that it lets the actions of the characters in the movie speak for themselves. In fact, despite some interesting on the ground footage from Pakistan, the movie plays like a stage play with a cinematic edge. It is a great showcase for Angelina Jolie because she disappears completely into this role. Looking at her and listening to her altered voice, you can hardly see her. The only time barely is when she is screaming and crying after hearing of the death of the husband of her character Marianne Pearl. Those sobs although different have similarity in "The Changeling" and "Original Sin". It shows her commitment to the role. Michael Winterbottom, who directed "24 Hour Party People" seems an interesting pick here but, like Philip Noyce, understands certain types of filmmaking. The shoot, which is documented on the disc's behind-the-scenes piece, shows that from filming on HD to almost shooting all the acting scenes in one house in India, the process becomes organic.Angelina seems very relaxed in the role. The overlapping takes seems to have been done heavily within one room. Jolie makes a point in the featurette that despite showing a dark chapter in this woman's life and wanting to capture her accurately, the movie also shows a very positive Muslim view in the character of Captain. You truly do get a feel of Karachi but also of the intimate and high intelligence of the people involved in the effort to find and free Daniel Pearl. The movie itself is preceded by a PSA by Christiane Amanpour who is a press/war correspondent for CNN. She knew Pearl and talks about the danger to journalists who, in recent years, instead of being used to get the messages of groups out, have themselves become targets. Another small featurette details the numbers behind these figures with one of the speakers making a big point that a lot of the photographs and video coming out of Iraq on the streets were taken by Iraqi journalists who are constantly in the line of fire. The trailer in comparison points to the intricacies involved at times in unraveling this kind of kidnapping. "A Mighty Heart" was overlooked at the box office but on Blu Ray, in addition to some actual HD footage captured in Pakistan, you can see the intimacy of a stage play honed in for a worldwide story. Out of 5, I give it a 2 1/2.