Angelina Jolie in the role of Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, in "A Mighty Heart."

By John Hayes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Journalism," like "love," is a loosely defined word that can mean a lot of things.

When coverage of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's 2002 abduction and grisly murder in Pakistan spiraled into an international media circus, much of the reporting stretched the definition of "journalism."

AP Photo/Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl. The journalist's abduction and murder by Islamic radicals rocked the news community in 2002. Click photo for larger image. 'A Mighty Heart' Starring: Angelina Jolie. Director: Michael Winterbottom. Rating: R for language Web site: amightyheartmovie.com Related article 'Mighty Heart' director tapped into widow's emotions, strength

Filmed in a documentary style that includes lots of quick cuts, shaky-camera and odd around-the-corner shots and mainstream news footage, director Michael Winterbottom's screen adaptation of a book by Pearl's widow hopes to be perceived as a truthful account of what really happened. French journalist Mariane Pearl's book on her husband's death mixes reportage with her perception of events. Brad Pitt bought the film rights and cast his paramour, Angelina Jolie, in the role of Mariane Pearl.

Globe-trotting reporters (Daniel Pearl was the South Asia Bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal) in the months after 9/11, the Pearls are living in Karachi, Pakistan, where he's following leads about would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and she's six months pregnant. When a source offers contact to an elusive Muslim cleric, Pearl tells his wife he might be late for dinner. When he's not home for breakfast, she begins a search that ultimately involves Karachi police, Pakistani military intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, the State Department, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

The journalist's abduction soon becomes the biggest news story in the world and a political embarrassment for Pakistan, a recent ally in America's new war on terrorism. Mariane's attempts to manage the search and restrain the media circus collapse abruptly when a barbaric video confirms that Pearl was murdered -- beheaded by Islamic radicals.

"A Mighty Heart" is a good movie denied greatness by its attempts to serve two masters: drama and journalism.

As a drama it's often cold, its characters two-dimensional, its jerky story line speeding toward what we all know is the worst possible ending. It's a fact-based story by a journalist about journalists, so it's not particularly sexy or dramatic. Jolie depicts Pearl's widow as vulnerable in private but generally heroic, stoic and stiff-lipped in an impossible situation. That may be biographically accurate. But while the character rightly deserves viewer sympathy, she's not written as an embraceable movie heroine.

That's because the script's source material, the original book, wasn't written to entertain. It was written to inform, based on the author's view of her husband (she loves him a lot), the people surrounding her during that horrible month in Karachi (she respects some, distrusts others) and events as perceived from the center of the storm. In interviews, Jolie confirmed that Winterbottom, screenwriter John Orloff and the cast were sensitive to Mariane Pearl's wishes during the making of "A Mighty Heart," taxing the spirit, if not the application, of the journalistic editing process.

Ever protective of her husband's motives, professional reputation and memory, he's shown repeatedly asking colleagues if his planned meeting with a shaky jihadist was reckless (they said no) and is depicted as nothing less than a loving, devoted husband.

Partisans on both sides of the abyss will have a field day with this one. In initial contacts, the kidnappers claimed to have taken Pearl to protest treatment of Taliban combatants. It was later reported that he was captured in response to the Journal's cooperation with the CIA, because he was Jewish, and because of accusations he was a field agent for various Western intelligence agencies. A key figure in Pearl's murder later said it was simply because he was American. Some U.S. intelligence agents are depicted as overbearing and uncooperative, but it's the Pakistanis who use torture (vaguely implied in the film) to gain credible evidence that leads to the capture of Pearl's killer.

Winterbottom, in fact, takes a less partisan tack than might be expected from the director of "The Road to Guantanamo," a 2006 documentary indictment of American anti-terror policy. The documentary touch -- natural light, occasional improvisation -- is more reminiscent of his work on "9 Songs," a theatrical dud that generated a minor buzz because of sex scenes that showed the actors engaged in actual acts of sex.

Nothing so graphic in "A Mighty Heart," except perhaps one chilling primal scream from Jolie and the sometimes awkward blending of drama and journalism.