21 Grams (2003)

Sometimes fancy chronology isn't the best of ideas. Here, it's interesting for a while, but eventually (around the time that Sean Penn gets a new heart, I think) it becomes clear that it's technique with little purpose -- style used to cloud a fairly simple story rather than bring anything new and worthwhile to it. You just kind of wish Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu would get the fuck out of the way and let the story tell itself. What should be an overwhelming and heartbreaking experience thus becomes muted into indifference; only the invaluable Benicio Del Toro, through his own prodigious talent, manages to push through the necessary emotion required to engender involvement rather than spectatorship. Penn and Naomi Watts are both very good as well, so it's a shame the film lets them down.

Grade: C+