15 | 108min | Biography, Drama, History | USA
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Writers: John Orloff (screenplay), Mariane Pearl (book)
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irrfan Khan
Mariane Pearl embarks on a frantic search to locate her journalist husband, Daniel, when he goes missing in Pakistan.
But... I always find the way American lives are - in the face of far greater tragedies, on far larger scales than the West could imagine - somehow valued more than other deaths a difficult point. This is a good film, but given the poverty and routine deaths of Pakistanis that provides this film with its backdrop, it's hard for me to really take it seriously, I suppose. Why is a film being made about one rich, privileged man's life being made, when, visible to all, and visible to us, in this film, the sheer scale of human suffering all around, is far more "film-worthy" than the actual story of the film itself.
It's a good movie, but why not make movies about the ordinary people that suffer far greater woes. Isn't that what should be happening. And shouldn't we be watching films, not with Hollywood A-listers, but films which are more likely to bring about a lessening of human suffering on a grander scale than the - albeit brutal - story of two rich, privileged journos who merely dip their toes into the metaphorical pool of human woe - and are shocked?
Thank goodness Irfhan Khan was in it!
Competent.
