Beefs...

Today's post is about the film A Mighty Heart, and why overemoting does not equal good acting. I understand that every actor wants an Oscar, and to get one you have to either a) be disabled (Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July), b) show the ugly (Charlize Theron in Monster) or c) overemote (again, Tom Cruise in Magnolia). Well, I think we can safely add Angelina Jolie to category (c) for a Mighty Heart. The movie was good until the point when her character, Mariane Pearl, finds out that her husband had been killed. Now, while I agree that any person could have a similar reaction upon hearing of the death of their loved one in such a brutal manner, Jolie must have taken her cue from the "Tom Cruise crying scene in Magnolia" school of acting, which is so succinctly described by Salon as: “…in his climactic scene in “Magnolia,” crying over his dying father, played by Jason Robards, I almost felt sorry for Cruise; there he was, shaking and crying and emoting, and Robards, playing comatose, completely outacted him.” Jolie dominated that scene in every way, just not in a good way.