Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.
21 Grams is a powerhouse of intersecting tragedy, driven by Alejandro González Iñárritu's fractured non-linear narrative that pulls maximum emotional devastation from its interlocking fates. The acting is extraordinary — Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio del Toro all deliver career-highlight performances of raw, unglamorous pain. Rodrigo Prieto's desaturated, handheld cinematography is viscerally immersive and thematically resonant. The non-linear structure, while bold, is essentially a refinement of the technique Iñárritu already deployed in Amores Perros, limiting Novelty somewhat. The ending, while emotionally coherent, dissipates slightly under the weight of its own accumulated grief, losing some of the cathartic clarity it strives for.