Director Duane Baughman takes a thorough but emotionally underwhelming approach to Benazir Bhutto, the two-time Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated in 2007 during a campaign rally when she returned from exile to seek a third term. Pakistan has had four military coups in the past 63 years, and the country's role in wider violent conflict has been a topic of political discourse since its involvement with the United States' fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bhutto's father and former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979. Benazir left Pakistan in 2002. Considering this long history, Baughman's exhaustive, fact-based methods are somewhat of an inevitable necessity.
That does not reconcile the fact that Baughman and co-writer Johnny O'Hara fail to give us any intimate exploration of Bhutto or her family. There are a handful of engrossing moments -- specifically at the film's opening and its beautiful conclusion. Scenes of Bhutto describing her father's parenting as a powerful moral compass or the eventual familial breakdown prior to her death hint at a much more powerful story to be told. Her significance as a political icon transcends the "woman in a man's world" template that Baughman relies upon. Rather, Bhutto's gravity rose from her compassionate approach toward the Pakistani people in a political climate where that alone was perceived as a threat. It would have been nice to have seen some similar sense of fervor in Baughman's work. (Not rated.)
