Director: Michael Winterbottom, 15, 100min

Stars: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi

On general release

Jolie is the beating heart of this urgent, unbearably tense dramatic reconstruction of the last days of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. She is also very nearly the thing that derails the whole movie.

Winterbottom’s lean, direct approach to the story serves it well – there is no time for padding, little opportunity even to draw breath, and the naturalistic performances from the impressive ensemble cast are utterly convincing. However, throw into that mix the global phenomenon that is Jolie, a woman so famous that she can bring entire continents to a standstill. This little indie film creaks and wobbles under the weight of all that celebrity. It is not that Jolie’s performance is bad – by the end of the film she has won us over with such a forceful display of grief that it leaves you limp and wrung out. It’s just that it takes a while to accept her performance as Mariane Pearl, rather than simply Jolie wearing a wig and a big sign that reads “potential Oscar nominee”.

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