ViewGuide

Created Nov 02, 2009 02:39PM PST • Edited Nov 02, 2009 02:39PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   The leading turns of Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams could well be enough to get you thinking you’re watching a great movie. Alas, the trio of leads in Inarritu’s film are expending more acting energy than they ought to have done, given how the film they feature in concerns itself more so with indulging in the misery of their characters’ lives than it does in illuminating their suffering, throwing in religious and spiritual elements around them as each goes through their own selfish routine to the cumulative effect of zero. Bafflingly, 21 Grams sees fit to assemble their interlocking stories out of sync, back and forthing through time for no worthwhile reason other than to cater to the expectations a post-Amores Perros Inarritu film brings with it. There’s no extra impact or (if we’re really going to plunder into the territory of wishful thinking) profundity to its method, just a great deal of confusion in the midst of its exploitation.

   Frames here are constantly clutted, though more with the close-up faces of Del Toro, Penn and Watts’ (others too, most meritorious being Charlotte Gainsbourg as Penn’s wife) faces than their surroundings, director and cinematographer attempting to invoke a personal feeling. Yet the film as a whole works at a distance from the incredible acting displays on show, not affected whatsoever by the car crash – one that left Watts’ husband and two daughters dead, and that gave gravely ill Penn a new heart – at the film’s core anywhere near as much as it should be. Funnily, the zooming in here is a tactic opposite to the rest of the picture’s, 21 Grams only occasionally achieving something outside of the cast’s efforts to get the viewer feeling something. For Inarritu applying the same storytelling device and doing so with more definition and soul, Babel’s the way to go, while 21 Grams should remain primarily interesting for what it’s on-screen talent manages to achieve in spite of the way Guillermo Arriaga’s script dictates all of the characters studied wind up little more than selfish cunts, asking us to sit there to gasp, ooh and ah at the simultaneous sorrow and resentment it breeds in them. Yay.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Fierce 2.3

19. Rudeness Profane 2.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.2

23. Biological Glib 1.2

24. Physical Glib 1.2