The couple, as well as several of their colleagues, are staying in Karachi, Pakistan in order to report on the general state of the area, as well as the people who live there. When Daniel goes on an interview with a possible member of Al Qaeda, he goes missing and Mariane, along with the cops she has brought into the mix, starts receiving e-mails about the state of her husband and demands for United States government intervention.
The movie is fairly heart-wrenching at times. For most of the movie, you aren't sure if Daniel is dead or alive, and the actors do a wonderful job of portraying the anxious, uncertain feelings that the real Mariane and her family must have felt at the time. When Mariane finally finds out what happened to her husband, Angelina Jolie does a great job of conveying the sheer heartache of the situation. She goes into another room and screems and cries at the top of her lungs. The scene alone was really powerful.
A Mighty Heart does a great job of showing the frantic feelings Mariane Pearl must have gone through as the FBI and various officials came into her life. Camera work in these sections are filled with short, choppy, almost stuttering scenes and add to the overall anxious feel of the moment. Adding to the realism of the film, as well as enhancing the fact that it is based on a true story, there are times when clips from actual press conferences are shown, one such scene is Mariane watching CNN as Colin Powell makes a public statement about the incident and the treatment of the prisoners and Guantanamo Bay, not to mention the scene at the end that splices in some of Daniel's (the real Daniel, not the actor) final video message.
There is one major problem I saw with both the HD DVD and what I saw of the DVD version of A Mighty Heart, and that's the sound quality. In both cases, I had to turn up the volume quite a lot, in fact on the DVD, the subtitles had to be turned on. Thankfully I have a fairly good surround sound system hooked up to my Xbox 360 HD DVD player, so I didn't have to turn on the subtitles on the HD DVD. So while both versions seem to have sound issues, the HD DVD version seems to have a slightly better quality.
There aren't really any special features on this disc. There is a making-of featurette as well as a statement from Christiane Amanpour explaining what the Daniel Pearl Foundation is and how it's focus is to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications. The last special feature is an examination of the Committee to Protect Journalists, how it was created and what its role has been over the years.
I was surprised by how little politics enter into this movie. When I heard about it, I figured it would be riddled with politics; instead it is, at its heart, a love story. The acting is pretty good all around and in general, this is a good movie. I have to say though, unless you already have an HD DVD player, and you are trying to grow your HD DVD library in order to support that side of the HD war, you might as well get it on DVD. The only real benefit I saw between the two versions is the sound quality mentioned above, especially since this isn't a visual effects-heavy movie that would benefit from high definition quality. In other words, get this movie on HD DVD only if you really want it like that, otherwise, pick it up on DVD.
