A Mighty Heart
Paramount Vantage | Release Date: June 22, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Stunning. Read full review
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The title comes from the memoir by Mariane Pearl, wife of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It applies equally to Winterbottom, who has made the rarest movie among this summer's releases: a taut police procedural that examines all sides of an issue and forces us to re-think our own. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Moving and frighteningly real. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The film belongs to Jolie. She won an Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," but this is by far her best performance. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Emotionally and viscerally compelling and retains a suspenseful, edge-of-the-seat quality. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Though absurdly criticized for being too "white" to play Mariane Pearl, Jolie gives an excellent performance. She portrays Mariane as gutsy, smart, passionate and highly efficient. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The film takes its cue from the widow, neither sermonizing or even villainizing, content to serve quietly as an admirable exercise in restraint and a moving example of the grace under pressure that is the essence of courage. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
What is best about A Mighty Heart is that it doesn't reduce the Daniel Pearl story to a plot, but elevates it to a tragedy. A tragedy that illuminates and grieves for the hatred that runs loose in our world, hatred as a mad dog that attacks everyone. Attacks them for what seems, to the dog, the best of reasons. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Visceral, alive and very scary. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The most striking thing about it is what it's not...a richly atmospheric film that races surefootedly through complexities of data and emotion like a spy movie and not at all like a sentimental sob story. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Expertly fashioned documentary-style drama. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Michael Winterbottom has made an enormously moving document of the tense days between Pearl's capture and the news that he was dead. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Effectively fashioned, as jolting as it is polished, as well as a surprising, insistently political work of commercial art. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The film's point of view is inevitably that of an outsider, which Danny Pearl was, and menace is the essence of this shattering story, which has been told with skill and urgent conviction. A Mighty Heart makes the terms of the terrorist threat palpable. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
That sense of one small, private world shattering within the larger and even more unstable one around it is the essence of Michael Winterbottom's unmooring, bleakly beautiful film version of A Mighty Heart. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
A worthy film on a great, tragic subject. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The film is fascinating and at times disturbing, but Winterbottom's arms-length style mutes any emotional impact. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Jolie simply exercises Mariane's persistent will, and honors her in the process. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Remarkably apolitical, considering that it comes from the director of the Bush-bashing "The Road to Guantanamo." Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
The story feels as urgent as the latest bad news out of the Middle East. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Heart-wrenching film. Read full review
75
PremiereGlenn Kenny
What does not work, in a movie where almost everything, including dramatic rhetoric, has been kept on a modest scale up to this point, is the heavy-handed way Winterbottom (and Jolie) contrast the pain of loss with the pain of begetting toward the end. Read full review
70
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The result, like many of Winterbottom's films, lies an inch short of disarray; we CAN keep pace with the investigation, but only just, and that sense of splintering honors the unpredictability of the setting. Read full review
70
VarietyJustin Chang
In his first studio venture, Michael Winterbottom coaxes forth a staggering wealth of detail from this terse, methodical account of Pearl's kidnapping and murder in Pakistan. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
A taut, meticulously crafted police procedural. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Functions primarily as a suspense film, and it manages to be gripping even though the outcome is already known. Read full review
70
SlateDana Stevens
This is one of those roles where casting can't help but trump acting. Like Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Angelina Jolie IS Mariane Pearl--and that marquee-size "is" gets in the way, not of her performance, but of our ability to suspend disbelief and watch it. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Schickel
This movie does not fully separate itself from our admittedly low -- even slightly shameful -- expectations, does not become the pure documentary it might perhaps better have been. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The movie is clipped, blunt, and grimly realistic. It is practically a POLICIER , although the suspense is mitigated by our knowledge that the investigation will end badly. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Despite the best of intentions, an actress who makes her own headlines gets in the way of the big picture. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
I almost wish A Mighty Heart were about the Captain, and I'd bet director Michael Winterbottom does, too. The character contains all the contradictory impulses of this region of the world that the West tries and miserably fails to boil down to black and white. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The overriding tone of A Mighty Heart is neither indignant nor sentimental: The film is consistently cool, almost to a fault. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
For the most part, Michael Winterbottom's well-intended film, the true story of an idealistic journalist and his gallant wife disinvites emotion by focusing on process at the expense of passion. Read full review
60
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
The movie is engrossing and well-acted throughout (especially Khan), but ultimately leaves us less optimistic about the prospects for peace. Read full review
58
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Angelina Jolie is the major alienation effect in A Mighty Heart, although she's not the only one. The hectic pizzazz with which hired gun Michael Winterbottom directs this tale of terrifying terrorism is another distraction. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarrit Ingman
The elliptical narrative also recalls Fernando Meirelles' somewhat similarly themed "The Constant Gardener," a film ultimately more heartfelt and accessible to mainstream audiences because its maker is unafraid of grief and explores it more deeply. Read full review
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