There is no way that the story of Daniel Pearl could have been more difficult for us to watch unfold than the way it is captured in the new docudrama A Mighty Heart. This is a good thing. The movie made you think not just about Pearl and his family and friends, but about the many people all over the world who get caught in the middle of conflicts they have little to do with.

It's also, surprisingly, a thinking person's movie about gun control, yes, gun control. I won't elaborate here except to say that some of the sequences where the police seize people from their homes and gunfire erupts reinforces the image of the gun as a tool of lawlessness as opposed to the decidely American portrayal of guns as enforcers of justice.

I must confess that while I am not an Angelina Jolie fan I felt she did a fantastic job in the lead role. The writing was fantastic and the hand held camera movement was definitely the appropriate choice for portions of the film.