I just watched this film.
It has the tagline: "It was an event that shocked the world. This is the story you haven’t heard."
That’s nonsense. Only someone who knows nothing about Islamic terrorism could be shocked by this.
As for telling an untold story, that’s also nonsense.
I found it a boring movie. Most of it is about Mrs. Marianne Pearl waiting around to find out what’s happened to her husband Daniel.
As we all know what happened to her husband — he had his head cut off by Muslims terrorists — this does not make for a compelling cinematic experience.
I would’ve been more interested in a movie that focused on Daniel Pearl’s final days.
I have these random thoughts:
* It felt like this movie was made so Angelina Jolie could show that she could act. I don’t find it interesting to watch people "act." I want to get swept away by a good story. The only time I got swept away by this film was in its final minutes.
* Journalists aspire to objectivity and to being above the fray. They still get murdered by evil people.
* Journalists such as Daniel Pearl deliberately put their lives at risk to get a story (and fame and fortune and significance). This was the life that Daniel and Marianne chose.
* Daniel was not a religious Jew. He married a non-Jew. Yet he was intrinsically Jewish enough to get himself killed. In his final seconds, he said, "I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew, my father is a Jew…"
* When journalists become the story, they are no more friendly to journalistic coverage than regular folks.
* When Marianne is asked by a journalist if she saw the videotape of Daniel’s final seconds, she replied, "Have you no decency?" That ended the interview. The journalist was right to ask the question. It was the question most on my mind during the movie’s conclusion.
Fred emails:
1. Re "A Mighty Heart", a good screen play makes a movie. A great actor, without a good screen play, can never make a good movie.
2. Rev. Wright has always been a bombastic jerk. Before now, having a bombastic jerk as Obama’s pastor has never been a liability. Now, for the first time, Wright is a liability, and Obama is desparately trying to get rid of Wright as if he were stepped in a pile of dog droppings and is trying to scrape off his shoe. Except Wright refuses to go silently.
3. Prager is right about Moyers.
