British director Michael Winterbottom takes what could have been a woeful, based-on-fact weepie and turns it into something sparse yet galvanizing. In dramatizing the days following the 2002 disappearance of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, Winterbottom uses the structure of a police procedural. Pearl’s pregnant wife (Angelina Jolie) is a journalist herself, and she dives into the search for her missing husband as if she were conducting another investigation. Jolie is a force here, though Winterbottom manages to keep her contained within his picture’s documentary style. For her big breakdown scene, he films her in shadowy silhouette, providing a buffer between us and the “acting.
