Pearls and swine intermingle

BRITAIN'S most prolific movie director, Michael Winterbottom, has already made a couple of films that have explored contemporary ...

A Mighty Heart (M) 4½ stars National release Michael Clayton (MA15+) 4 stars National release

BRITAIN'S most prolific movie director, Michael Winterbottom, has already made a couple of films that have explored contemporary themes in the Muslim world. In this World (2002) depicted the dangerous, illegal journey made overland by a couple of young refugees from a camp in Afghanistan to an unwelcoming Europe. The Road to Guantanamo (2006) told the story of British Muslims spirited away from Afghanistan to Guantanamo.

Having made a couple of films sympathetic to the Muslim point of view, Winterbottom has now made, in A Mighty Heart, a powerful indictment of Muslim extremism. This is the story of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped in Karachi in 2002, then beheaded and dismembered by his cruelly fanatical captors. Or, rather, it's the story of his wife, Mariane, because it's told from her perspective. Mariane is played, very well indeed, by Angelina Jolie, who was anxious to play the role. Her stellar presence and the fact this is the first Winterbottom film backed by a leading Hollywood studio may suggest compromise, but happily that's not the case.

Winterbottom, who is more skilled at making docudramas than just about anyone else working today (and that includes Paul Greengrass) hasn't compromised his working methods in the least. To start with, he filmed on location in Karachi; other, less dedicated, filmmakers may have substituted a safer location. Karachi becomes almost another character in the drama, its teeming, clogged streets so powerfully filmed that you can almost smell them.

Pearl, who was researching a story on failed shoe bomber Richard Reid for The Wall Street Journal at the time of his kidnapping, appears only fleetingly in the film. He's played by Dan Futterman, who is better known as a screenwriter (Capote) than as an actor but who vividly etches in the character of the dedicated, ultimately reckless, reporter. The main focus of the film is on the pregnant Mariane and on those who gathered around to help her during this crisis. They included Asra (Archie Panjabi), a friend who also happens to be a Muslim and a journalist; Randall Bennett (Will Patton), a representative of the US consulate; and John Bussey (Denis O'Hare), a senior editor for the Journal who comes from New York to give Mariane moral support. The investigation is led by a police officer known only as the Captain, a man who clearly finds himself in a delicate political situation.

Winterbottom's meticulous presentation of the facts, based on Mariane Pearl's book, gives the film its chillingly authentic tone. There is a terrible moment when it's revealed that Pearl is a Jew and his captors accuse him of being employed by Mossad. There are frank admissions that brutal methods will be used to interrogate suspects. Most of all, the film convincingly re-creates a dangerous, confusing, contradictory environment with rare accomplishment.

* * *

TONY Gilroy, the debut director of the excellent new thriller Michael Clayton, is best known as a writer for the Bourne trilogy, but his own film doesn't resemble those hectic chase movies. Rather, it's a piercingly intelligent, cerebral drama that explores relevant contemporary themes, such as the obligation big companies have towards the environment. It's also a film about the legal profession and Gilroy finds the profession seriously wanting.

The ever-reliable George Clooney plays the title character who has worked as a special counsel, or troubleshooter, for large New York law firm Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, for the past 17 years without having been made a partner. Instead he's assigned to perform miracles, such as helping a valued client escape a hit-and-run incident. He's beginning to chafe at the way his boss, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), is treating him. At the beginning of the film, Clayton narrowly escapes death when his car explodes; we then flash back four days to discover who wanted to kill him. It's a murky case involving an important client, U/North, a multinational agrochemical concern that is fighting a long-running lawsuit brought by small farmers who claim to have been sold poisonous insecticide.

The lawyer Bach assigned to the case, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), has suffered a nervous breakdown and appears to have changed sides. With many millions of dollars in the balance, and U/North and Kenner, Bach and Ledeen in the firing line, Clayton is assigned to keep the lid on the unstable Edens.

At first the structure of the film seems unduly complex, not as complex as Syriana but convoluted nonetheless. Perhaps it would have been better not to saddle the Clayton character with so many burdens: a failed marriage, a demanding son, a gambling addiction. But as the film progresses it gains in strength and Gilroy gradually builds the tension almost to breaking point. The cast is uniformly excellent: Clooney, Wilkinson, Pollack, these are all fine actors. Yet the film is almost stolen from under their noses by Tilda Swinton, who beautifully portrays U/North's chief legal counsel, Karen Crowder, a woman who combines nervousness and ruthlessness in more or less equal proportions.