.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Watching the audience's response to Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film 21 Grams , I was not surprised. The theatre patrons comprised of mostly elderly individuals (probably attracted like a bug to a blue light by the press headers showing 21 Grams with multiple Golden Globe nominations). There were probably about 70-80 people in all. In the first half hour, my peripheral vision was picking up various indiglo watches with people checking the time. In the next half hour, people were talking, asking questions to their dates and escorts about what was transpiring on the screen. And by the end, the audience was about 7-10 people lighter than when the trailers were shown. Not that this is a bad thing. Actually, the exact opposite. 21 Grams , with its dark and dispiriting subject manner is one of the best films of 2003. Just don't expect to understand everything that is going on in the first 45 minutes. Shot out of sequence and using a color pallet of greys and blues, the first half of the film is as hard to follow as anything you are likely to see this year. Fortunately, the acting is so engrossing that you can't take your eyes off the screen, and slowly, your brain will begin to put the pieces together like a 1000 piece jig saw puzzle.

The story in its linear sense is a familiar one. Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) is an ailing middle-aged man who receives a heart transplant from a donor that was in a hit-and-run accident that also took the life of his two daughters. Paul, with his new found lease on life, looks to discover the origin of his new organ and eventually finds the grieving widow, Christina Peck, played in an Oscar worthy performance by Naomi Watts ( Mullholland Drive ). The two don't fall in love as much as they find a reliance on each other to help them adapt to their new environments, and within days they are living with each other, resembling two broken crutches trying to hold up a 300-pound man.

On the other side of the story, Jack Jordan (played by Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro), is a religious ex-con who was behind the wheel when three quarters of the Peck family were struck down. Living a life of depression, Jack turns himself in and after a stint in prison is back on the streets working in dead end jobs, trying to get his life together while looking for meaning in his existence.

It is not long before Paul's new heart begins to fail, and with his mortality staring at him head on, he abets in plan with Christina to kill Jack Jordan to bring justice and closure to all involved.

This was the first English language film for writer/director Alejandro González Iñárritu who directed one of 2000's best films, the Academy Award nominated Amores Perros . As in Amores, Alejandro is able to weave multiple stories and complex characters threw a plot that eventually shows how the lives of all those involved intercept. Alejandro also has a talent for de-glamorizing his actors and in 21 Grams, he gets arguably the best performances of Sean Penn, Naomi and Benicio Del Toro's careers.

The shooting of a film out of sequence has become a bit of a pattern as of late. Quentin Tarantino began the craze with Pulp Fiction in 1994, and variations have been thrown at audiences like artistic genres culminating in Christopher Nolan's 2000 backwards film Memento . But in 21 Grams , the format is both exhausted and perfected. The movie does not just flashback, but contains constant timeline jumps from past to present to future that requires a viewers full attention if they have any hopes of piecing it all together before the final credits roll.

So if you don't mind paying to sit through a film that is filled with grief, despair and death, through the holidays, then treat yourself to what is one of the best of the year.