3 gibbles outta 5

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Mainly focusing on the widow of a murdered journalist both directly before and after the kidnapping and eventually publicized beheading of her husband, “A Mighty Heart” does an excellent job of treading a line between realism and drama, without stooping too far into boring fact-relating or melodramatic cliche.  The movie is still average, in my opinion, as any film which is based on already-known events faces the difficulty of building suspense for the viewer.

While “Heart” is carried by some great performances and a good application of fly-on-the-wall direction, there’s a wandering to it that tries to distract the watcher from the fact that you know where it’s all going. This might be a shallow comment, as I suppose these films are meant to shed light on something as opposed to strictly entertain someone – but the films are released and charge for tickets, so it still must be made with the hope of keeping one’s interest.

Anyhow, what did stick out (and was portrayed startlingly well by Ms. Jolie, of whom I’m not really a fan) was the strength of the main characters. No one is portrayed as outright stupid or weak, and the response and eventual “resolution” of events comes across as incredibly true. Which, y’know, it was, I guess. Yup.