The Journalist And The Jihadi: The Murder Of Daniel Pearl – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

Directors

Ahmed A. Jamal and Ramesh Sharma

Cast

Christiane Amanpour Narrator
Daniel Pearl (Archived Footage)

DVD Release Date: February 20, 2007
Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 80 Minutes

The Movie

On September 11, 2001, the United States came under attack from terrorists who hijacked planes and flew them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers. The towers ended up collapsing to the ground killing thousands in one of the most horrific tragedies the world has ever seen. Mere hours after the planes first crashed into the buildings, reporters all over the world were sent to different locations to investigate the happenings and get the story. Daniel Pearl was one of those reporters.

Pearl grew up in a nice home with a fun-loving Jewish family consisting of his successful parents and two sisters. Growing up he was into so many activities that his mother could barely keep track of them all. As a child he involved himself in soccer, baseball, and something that would go on to be one of the great loves of his life, music. Daniel learned how to play the guitar and violin, even moving around playing in different clubs and with a few bands. Classical music was his expertise, but he even turned his skills to country music and played a fantastic fiddle. Pearl also created a newspaper at Stanford that still is published today. It was then he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a reporter.

Omar Sheikh is a British born man of Pakistani background who looked to have a promising life ahead of him even as a young child. He was a very intelligent child who was a master chess player from an early age. Billed as one of the brightest in his school, he received a scholarship to go to University in London where he studied economics to further enhance his education. A man not only of intelligence but also of strength, Sheikh worked out a lot and competed in many arm-wrestling competitions to shows how strong he was. It was at his school that he also banded together with Islamic fundamentalist groups and beginning to find his calling in life and what he was destined to do.

Daniel Pearl had finally made the big time and gotten a job at the Wall Street Journal. Quickly becoming one of its top reporters, he was transferred all over the place to cover huge news stories. London, Paris, the Soviet Union, and Bombay were just a few of the places he had lived and continued his controversial reporting that sometimes caught the ire of many governments. But that was just his style. He wrote the only way he knew how and that was with his feelings and the truth.

Sheikh went on to become one of the most powerful men in the Jihadi nation working right under Osama Bin Laden. He is said to be directly connected with the hijacking and destruction on September 11. Sheikh organized rallies, kidnappings, killings, and so much more to make sure that his nation would not be under the control of anyone but themselves. A very brilliant man who knew exactly what he was doing at all times in order not to get caught; even going as far as to hiring different groups of men for different parts of his operations so word could not get leaked out. He would do anything for his beliefs.

In early 2002, Daniel Pearl was on his way to interview a supposed terrorist leader when he was kidnapped and taken hostage in an unknown location. The group who abducted him claimed he was a CIA officer and sent e-mails and faxes to the United States showing pictures of Pearl at gunpoint and making demands in exchange for his release. The demands were not met on time and Daniel Pearl was murdered by decapitation. His body was found cut into ten pieces and buried in a yard. It was discovered around the same time that the man responsible for Pearl’s death was Omar Sheikh.

The documentary is very well done and shows the lives of both men in an interesting way. A small segment of Pearl’s life was shown first documenting his childhood and how he grew up. The next segment was of Sheikh’s childhood. Next would be Pearl’s teen years, then Sheikh’s, and so on and so forth. It worked really well in being able to compare and contrast the two as they grew from boys to men.

Two men in locations nowhere near each other and on totally different paths in life, but somehow their lives crossed paths. The weird part is that up until college, they both seemed to live very similar and normal lives. Loving their families and going through school hoping to make something of themselves as most people do. Both shoed so much potential and intelligence that it was almost a given they’d both succeed in every challenge they ever took on. It just didn’t seem to stay as they both continued down the path of success, but Pearl’s path noticeable to so many while Sheikh’s was in his own mind and those of his fellow terrorists.

So many scenes in this documentary show some very strong scenes such as children with weapons, burning of the American flag, and action on the war battlefields. The beginning starts out with some of the strongest images as immediately you are thrust back to 2001 and see footage of the planes hitting the World Trade Center towers. Bodies falling and jumping from the burning buildings so as not to be burned alive right before they crumbled to the ground. What shocked me most was that actual footage was included of people jumping from the towers and dead people bleeding from the head and laying on the street. Yet, the actual footage of Daniel Pearl’s beheading was not put in but only dictated in the narration.

I’m not saying I cared to see it, but it was a bit of a surprise as I kind of expected it in there after some of the things that had already been shown. Perhaps it was down out of courtesy to the family or perhaps a show of class. But I don’t see how that would be the case if a shot of a man in a suit diving out of one of top floor windows of the World Trade Center to his death is much different.

The Video

The documentary is shown in 4:3 Fullscreen Format and is as good as it can get for being mostly made up of old news footage. There isn’t much to it since all you do get are the old home video looking clips from people and then the random interviews thrown in.

The Audio

The documentary is heard Dolby Digital 2.0 sound and comes through just fine. There isn’t much to be heard except for the narration and the interviews spread throughout the duration. I will give it a bit of a hand simply because when a tape of Daniel Pearl is played after he was kidnapped, you can clearly hear the explosions in the background.

Special Features

None

The Inside Pulse

The story of Daniel Pearl is a tragic one that saw the life of an innocent and promising young man end way too early. This documentary shows a lot about his life that I honestly never knew even though I had watched hours of coverage when he was still in captivity. And much was also learned about Omar Sheikh, but I could have done without knowing anything about that abomination of a human being. There are no special features, but I don’t see why there would be a need for any for such a topic. An interesting film to say the least and worth the watch, but I doubt it’s a film you’d want to make repeat viewings of.

The DVD Lounge’s Ratings for The Journalist And The Jihadi: The Murder Of Daniel Pearl
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
THE MOVIE

6.5
THE VIDEO

5
THE AUDIO

6
THE EXTRAS

0
REPLAY VALUE

6
OVERALL
4.5
(NOT AN AVERAGE)