A Mighty Heart (DVD)

I read an article a little while back that said the 1970's had returned as far as movies were concerned. In a year that has brought us Breach, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse Jame, Michael Clayton and the upcoming Ridley Scott winner American Gangster it's pretty hard to disagree. These movies all invoke the ghosts of Alan J. Pakula, Robert Altman, John Frankenheimer and Sidney Lumet (whom, at 83, has his own movie Before the Devil Knows Your Dead coming out soon), all of them thinking persons' epics ranking as some of the best pictures produced this year.

You can add Michael Winterbottom's powerful A Mighty Heart starring Angelina Jolie to that list. This procedural drama about the events surrounding the 2002 abduction and murder of Washington Post reporter Daniel Pearl (movingly portrayed by Dan Futterman) and how it affects his pregnant fellow journalist wife Mariane (Jolie) is a near-unforgettable experience. And while it isn't exactly an upper (how could it be?), the film is still a soaring testament to the power of hope and the importance of a free press. Most of all it is a profound aria of truth, the picture an emotional powder keg almost impossible to forget.

Based on the memoir by Mariane, screenwriter John Orloff and director Winterbottom construct the tale as ticking clock thriller touching on many of the moral and political issues facing us today. But the strength of the film is that it refuses to preach, and while it does have a decidedly liberal bent (and how a movie from the man behind The Road to Guantanamo and Welcome to Sarajevo be anything otherwise) it doesn't ever push those sentiments down a viewer's throat.

Jolie is flat-out phenomenal. This is easily the best performance the actress has given since winning her Oscar for Girl, Interrupted, maybe the best of her entire career (eclipsing even her remarkable work in the HBO docudrama Gia). It is unfortunate that the film's poor box office has hurt her chances for a academy Award nomination because, without question, few actors (male or female) have done better work in 2007 than what she does here.

But she isn't the only one who excels. Veteran character actor Irrfan Khan (so good in both The Darjeeling Limited and The Namesake) is wonderful as the driven police inspector desperately trying to form a coalition to solve the case before it is too late, while Archie Panjabi (A Good Year) is almost heartbreaking as Danny's reporting partner who forges an emotional sisterhood with Mariane while both doggedly try to put the puzzle pieces of his disappearance together. But this is Jolie's film start to finish, and in the end A Mighty Heart would be nothing more than an adequate made-for-TV drama without her.

Paramount Vantage's DVD release is horrendously flaccid. There is a fairly standard 30-minute making-of feature, a public service announcement with Christiane Amanpour for the Committee to Protect Journalist and a moderately interesting featurette about the organization that's admittedly nothing more than an extended public relations video. There is no commentary track with Winterbottom, no feature on Mariane, no inclusion of her mesmerizing 2002 "60 Minutes" interview. These so-called special features are anything but, and for those looking for more information on the real events the picture documents I suggest turning to the woman's excellent book because you're certainly not going to find them here.

Thankfully the movie is plenty incredible without these bonus options. Personally I think it is one of the most important films of the year anchored by an unforgettable performance by Jolie. As I have said to people before it is a magnificent testament to both truth and understanding in a world in desperate need of both, all of it making A Mighty Heart a drama any of those heralded 70's filmmakers would love to have called their own.