A Mighty Heart’s problem is that it’s a superbly felt and acted film that’s put together so oddly that you can’t appreciate it.  The whole cast deserves an A for Effort, but in the end the film just too out of touch with its own story to work as well as it ought to.

A Mighty Heart
2 & 1/2 Stars

There’s a strange subtlety to A Mighty Heart.  WIth constant and quick cutting, the film is always moving through the story, rarely taking a minute to let the details sink in.  The problem this sort of film is asking to run into is, when a movie rarely has a shot last longer than five seconds, can the emotional core find its way out of the story and into the audience?  A Mighty Heart honestly tries to solve this dilemma, but it often fails.

Based off of real events, the film is about journalist Daniel Pearl as he is kidnapped while reporting in Pakistan in the immediate months following 9/11.  Once this happens ten minutes into the running time, the film blasts into a full-on investigation of his disappearance, never really stopping to take a breath or give much time to examining the characters.

Lucky for the film, it’s filled to the brim with strong actors who know how to appear to carry the burden of missing a loved one, and the desperation that inevitably follows.  One really shouldn’t overlook anyone in the film – this is a terrific ensemble that deserves recognition; but if you have to name one actor in particular, it’s probably going to be Angelina Jolie, who plays Danny’s wife and the lead of the film.  Her empty gaze that is used in most of her parts says everything that words can’t about the character’s fear for her husband.  as the film goes on, her scenes become more and more painful to watch as she begins to realize what has happened to her husband.

But the editing is too much and too fast to let us take a minute with the characters.  We never learn the characteristics of anyone here, we just have actors who know how to relate tragedy.  We can see them suffering, but we never get to know them or sympathize with them.  As it is, it’s just a movie about people being sad, without any real purpose or explanation.  There’s a solid hour in the middle of the film where it feels like nothing happens besides tiny advancements of plot that could have been cut out of the film, just parading on one after another – why couldn’t we have replaced it with a nice time-out at the beginning to see what life was like for the Pearls before the kidnapping?

I can go so far as to say – and believe me, a lot of people would say this is going too far – but I can say that if you were looking for a better non-fiction movie about the horror and stupidity of kidnapping, you wouldn’t have to go very far back, just to January of this year, to find the film, and the film is Alpha Dog.  It doesn’t carry a fraction of the buzz that A Mighty Heart has; but by letting us just hang out with the characters, we sympathize with them and ultimately, actually care about the outcome of the film.

A film as political as this could easily have a secondary message, but there’s nothing under the surface here, and there’s not much above it either.  The right people are involved for the most part, it just needs a few more scenes to let us understand who these people are and a pace that’s less about finding the accurate time-line of the real-life events and more about finding the emotions of the real-life events.

What’s the point of seeing a scary movie that isn’t scary?  In this case, there isn’t much of one at all.

1408
2 Stars

It’s too bad.  It really is.  Because 1408 has a great first act.  With a good 25 minutes of film dedicated solely to John Cusack being a pompous blowhard of a Writer (and really, isn’t that what we all are?), you settle into the character and know that, if anything bad happens to this character, you’re going to feel for him.

Except then the bad stuff starts happening, and, well. . .

Cusack plays a failed (and often drinking) novelist who writes about haunted houses to pay the rent, but all the while feels violently over-qualified for the gig.  It’s all going miserably until he checks into the Dolphin Hotel and becomes more miserable by experiencing his first actual haunting.  So this is when it gets good, when the room is torturing Cusack and the audience with all sorts of cute thrills that have you squeezing the armrest, right?  Wrong.

Once we’re in the namesake-numbered room, it feels like the movie is just wandering around the suite, trying to find an idea for a way to scare you; but most of the time it just comes up short.  There are a few bright spots (like a failed escape from the room) but this PG-13 never gets your blood running.  It’s just a tame thriller, and one that ends post-maturely and nonsensically at that.

The only force that keeps you in the film is Cusack.  The guy is like a 160 pounds bag of frosted lovableness, impossible to not want to see on the screen.  So it’s fun to watch a likable guy play a depressed asshole with a love for wisecracks, even while he’s experiencing his own personal Hell.  Samuel L. Jackson contributes to the film when he’s trying desperately to dissuade Cusack from going into the infamous room, but his only scene lasts ten minutes.  Oh well, at least he gets to say “fuck.”

Besides Cusack performance, there’s not much in the movie worth watching.  And if you’re just wanting a good Cusack movie, you’d be better off just renting High Fidelity again.