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Mighty Heart, A

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 28 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
John Orloff
Mariane Pearl (book)
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 22, 2007
DVD: October 16, 2007
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: UK / USA
Summary
RATING: R for language
Starring Dan Futterman, Angelina Jolie, Archie Panjabi, Irfan Khan, Denis O'Hare, Will Patton, and Gary Wilmes
Angelina Jolie stars as Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, in director Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Mariane's memoir "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl," recounting the abduction and murder of her husband by Pakistani militants.
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The title comes from the memoir by Mariane Pearl, wife of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It applies equally to Winterbottom, who has made the rarest movie among this summer's releases: a taut police procedural that examines all sides of an issue and forces us to re-think our own.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The film belongs to Jolie. She won an Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," but this is by far her best performance.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The film takes its cue from the widow, neither sermonizing or even villainizing, content to serve quietly as an admirable exercise in restraint and a moving example of the grace under pressure that is the essence of courage.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
What is best about A Mighty Heart is that it doesn't reduce the Daniel Pearl story to a plot, but elevates it to a tragedy. A tragedy that illuminates and grieves for the hatred that runs loose in our world, hatred as a mad dog that attacks everyone. Attacks them for what seems, to the dog, the best of reasons.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Emotionally and viscerally compelling and retains a suspenseful, edge-of-the-seat quality.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The most striking thing about it is what it's not...a richly atmospheric film that races surefootedly through complexities of data and emotion like a spy movie and not at all like a sentimental sob story.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The film's point of view is inevitably that of an outsider, which Danny Pearl was, and menace is the essence of this shattering story, which has been told with skill and urgent conviction. A Mighty Heart makes the terms of the terrorist threat palpable.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Effectively fashioned, as jolting as it is polished, as well as a surprising, insistently political work of commercial art.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Michael Winterbottom has made an enormously moving document of the tense days between Pearl's capture and the news that he was dead.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
That sense of one small, private world shattering within the larger and even more unstable one around it is the essence of Michael Winterbottom's unmooring, bleakly beautiful film version of A Mighty Heart.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
What does not work, in a movie where almost everything, including dramatic rhetoric, has been kept on a modest scale up to this point, is the heavy-handed way Winterbottom (and Jolie) contrast the pain of loss with the pain of begetting toward the end.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The story feels as urgent as the latest bad news out of the Middle East.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Remarkably apolitical, considering that it comes from the director of the Bush-bashing "The Road to Guantanamo."
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The film is fascinating and at times disturbing, but Winterbottom's arms-length style mutes any emotional impact.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Jolie simply exercises Mariane's persistent will, and honors her in the process.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The result, like many of Winterbottom's films, lies an inch short of disarray; we CAN keep pace with the investigation, but only just, and that sense of splintering honors the unpredictability of the setting.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
In his first studio venture, Michael Winterbottom coaxes forth a staggering wealth of detail from this terse, methodical account of Pearl's kidnapping and murder in Pakistan.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The movie is clipped, blunt, and grimly realistic. It is practically a POLICIER , although the suspense is mitigated by our knowledge that the investigation will end badly.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Functions primarily as a suspense film, and it manages to be gripping even though the outcome is already known.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
This is one of those roles where casting can't help but trump acting. Like Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Angelina Jolie IS Mariane Pearl--and that marquee-size "is" gets in the way, not of her performance, but of our ability to suspend disbelief and watch it.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
This movie does not fully separate itself from our admittedly low -- even slightly shameful -- expectations, does not become the pure documentary it might perhaps better have been.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Despite the best of intentions, an actress who makes her own headlines gets in the way of the big picture.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The overriding tone of A Mighty Heart is neither indignant nor sentimental: The film is consistently cool, almost to a fault.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
For the most part, Michael Winterbottom's well-intended film, the true story of an idealistic journalist and his gallant wife disinvites emotion by focusing on process at the expense of passion.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
I almost wish A Mighty Heart were about the Captain, and I'd bet director Michael Winterbottom does, too. The character contains all the contradictory impulses of this region of the world that the West tries and miserably fails to boil down to black and white.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The movie is engrossing and well-acted throughout (especially Khan), but ultimately leaves us less optimistic about the prospects for peace.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Angelina Jolie is the major alienation effect in A Mighty Heart, although she's not the only one. The hectic pizzazz with which hired gun Michael Winterbottom directs this tale of terrifying terrorism is another distraction.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
The elliptical narrative also recalls Fernando Meirelles' somewhat similarly themed "The Constant Gardener," a film ultimately more heartfelt and accessible to mainstream audiences because its maker is unafraid of grief and explores it more deeply.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 28 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Daniel N. gave it a10:
One of a kind. One of the most important films this year and every American should see it. Jolie at her very best. Give her the Oscar now.
Darlene G. gave it a10:
Angelina Jolie - amazing woman, amazing actress, amazing heart. Great performance worthy of an Oscar.
Jared C gave it a0:
Blow me. They try to make this movie to be an emotional sad film, but had no taste at all. Angelina Jolie was all right but the plot was completely out of the ordinary pointless.
Linda M gave it a9:
Gripping, restrained and intelligently portrayed.
John W. gave it a10:
tense, devastating and emotional. AJ gives a performance that perfectly captures the anger, hope, and despair of Mariane Pearl. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time; a thriller and a love story all at once. Very moving. Loved the end song and the simple piano piece over the flashbacks.
Caladonia K. gave it a10:
FANTASTIC. Angelina is brilliant in this heartbreaking masterpiece.
Jocelyn G. gave it a10:
If anyone of you who see any dissatisfaction with the film are looking only on one aspect of the film which is the popularity of the Miss Jolie, in the back of anyones mind, can you honestly say that you or anyone else can do a much better job of playing the role of Miss Pearl? Yes Pearl was played by a Caucasian as well as the most popular actress, but you have to admit that with make-up, wig and accent, she did disappear from being Jolie to being Marianne Pearl, not only by looks but by playing the main character of the story. If no one can see this, then non of you have the right to be critics because you judge by the celebrity status of the actress and not by how intense she can play the part. jg...
