Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu made waves in 2001 with the marvelous "Amores Perros," which began with a
car crash and then showed us the lives of the people involved in it. His first English-language film, "21 Grams," which he has again co-written with Guillermo Arriaga, also uses a car accident as a means of making strangers' lives intersect, and also tells its story in a non-linear fashion. The difference is that unlike "Amores Perros," the story in "21 Grams" is negligible. Untangle it, put it in proper order, and look at it objectively, and you see that both plot and characters are thin and threadbare. Though it might be a case of style over substance, the style of "21 Grams" is so engaging you can almost overlook its lack of substance. We meet several different characters, some with no clear connection to each other, some in what seem to be contradictory circumstances. For example, there is Sean Penn lying on his deathbed, then needing a heart transplant, then lying on the floor having been shot. There's Benicio Del Toro being urged to phone an ambulance, and there he is again preaching born-again Christianity to a misdirected teenager. All of the film rolls forth in that manner, with moments occurring out of sequence, all the pieces of the puzzle being assembled randomly. We learn, gradually, the basics: There has been a car accident resulting in death, and that death facilitated an organ transplant. The death was wrongful, however, and the car accident occurred out of gross negligence. Justice must be paid.
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