21 Grams

Pros: Performances
Cons: Stylistic Excess

Health care is a weird profession. Everyone that practices medicine or any of the allied health professions works to keep people well. But if nobody gets sick, they are without a career. Profiting from the suffering of others is sort of a queasy ...

Pros: No nonsense film about responsibility and redemption.
Cons: The tragedy of it all becomes unbearable throughout.

This one stirred up a bit of notice when it was released for some of the fairly frank views it took on modern life. Taking the stories of three people, director Alejandro González Iñárritu weaves a tale of divine redemption, human frailty, and the ways ...

Pros: powerful story, with powerful scenes, great performances and little extras along the way
Cons: slow, hard to watch at times, very depressing

In some circles, it's hip to bash this film for its style, which is like a slow-turning wheel, inside of which is a maze whose torturous paths lead, inevitably, to a moment of crisis giving way to philosophical epiphany. Getting there is an ordeal. ...

Pros: Penn, Watts, del Toro
Cons: at times too complicated for its own good

21 Grams is a film about many important things, told in a sometimes artistic and sometimes unnecessarily convoluted style. Directer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros), clearly a man interested in both artful storytelling ...

Pros: Excellent cast and acting
Cons: Weird editing, slow pacing, very very dark

21 Grams stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benecio del Toro in a twisted tale of love, guilt, redemption, and revenge. The title ‘21 Grams’ comes from the theory that the human soul weighs 21 grams. Back in the early 1900's, scientists had a bunch of ...

Pros: Acting, story
Cons: ABCDE does not work better as CAEDB

If you were telling someone this story: Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love with Girl. Boy marries Girl. Girl gets knocked up. Boy loses Girl and Baby. Boy skips out on Child Support. Boy gets thrown in Prison. Girl and Baby live ...

Pros: Acting, acting, acting…
Cons: Non-linear story-telling format.

21 Grams, its only relevance comes in a solemn, philosophical voice-over spoken in hushed tones by Sean Penn as he lies dying of heart failure in a hospital room: "They all say we lose 21 Grams at the exact moment of death," he considers in a diluted ...

Pros: beautiful, sweet, challenging, difficult, well acted and beautifully directed
Cons: It isn't for everyone

Since Citizen Kane film makers have felt free to shatter linear story telling, and arrange their films in the way that they believe will offer the greatest impact. Granted, most films are not non-linear; but recently directors and screenwriters ...

Pros: Sean Penn as the professor, riveting, suspenseful
Cons: Out of order, too much bad stuff, not enough good

An intense, loose telling of a horrific existence, 21 Grams stars Sean Penn. Words escape me to describe the level of intensity in this movie. Similar to a traffic accident, you don't want to look but you can't turn away from the ...

Pros: Just about everything.
Cons: Frustrating structure.

Roger Ebert said that 21 Grams "would have been more powerful in chronological order," but I can only disagree. Thinking of the film, in chronological order, I'm sure I would have been affected by it had it been that way, but not nearly as much. The ...

Pros: Watts, Del Toro, Penn and Melissa Leo!!
Cons: Why did this story need to be told out of order?!?! Answer: it didn't.

21 GRAMS is a difficult movie to summarize. Here’s the barest snapshot: Naomi Watts has a nice, nuclear family, and they are all killed one day as they are out walking their neighborhood. A car (driven by Benicio del Toro) has struck them and driven ...

Pros: a compelling (but derivative) visual style, honestly great moments throughout individual performances. Director is promising.
Cons: How much high melodrama can you overstuff into 2 hours

David's second chance at life with his heart transplant takes an emotional turn when he meets Erika and tells her that it's her late husband Michael's heart beating inside of him. Gene, who caused the accident leading to Michael's death, suffers a severe ...

Pros: Brilliant performances from Penn, Watts and del Toro.
Cons: Stylistic conceits overwhelm

A few years back, Christopher Nolan's Memento dazzled audiences by telling a story entirely in reverse. 21 Grams tells its story in a similar fashion, and the results are decidedly mixed. At first, as the viewer is trying to decipher ...

Pros: Tremendous ensemble acting. Gritty visuals. Realistic, poetic dialogue.
Cons: A sluggish pace. A decidedly melodramatic plot.

If one sets the bar for a movie being "long" at two hours, more and more movies are moving into long territory. When a film is lengthy, it bears an extra responsibility to the audience to keep us interested throughout the running time. Certain films, ...

Pros: A unique presentation and quality acting.
Cons: confusing, especially the beginning.

The Question is, is 21 Grams a four star movie or a five star movie? I'll decide at the end. When I first started watching 21 Grams, I thought, just as you're supposed to, what the HELL is going on. For 21 minutes, 21 Grams made absolutely no sense. ...