21 Grams
“21 Grams” uses the now-trendy technique of jockeying with the timeline, bringing us scenes from the end of the story at the beginning, and generally mixing things up. As with most uses of this technique, I didn’t see how it added much to the story or the experience of watching it. So it became a distraction, something that kept me at arm’s length from an already cold and numbing tale of death and loss.
Onw wonderful surprise was Sean Penn. After I slammed his “Acting! Thank You!” performance in “Mystic River,” here he was about the only thing that kept the proceedings on a human level. His sad, lonely Paul Rivers, waiting for a heart transplant, seemed like the only truly human character in the story. I especially liked his flashes of wistful humor.
I’m on the fence about recommending this one. It’s certainly better and more interesting than 90 percent of what’s out there. For example, I enjoyed this much more than the “In America” weep-fest. But it’s just too cold to give a hearty recommendation to. Try it at your own risk.
I am not a fan of the immediate flash back, start w/ the last scene kind of film. They’re generally a bad way to start a movie. I have not seen 21 Grams, but case in point would be Road To Perdition. Why start with the kid on the beach? You could have started w/ the voice over him riding his bike down the street and not needed that awkward “much earlier” kind of transition. You see a kid on the beach, you have no context for the scene or the character, and by the end of the film when you will have it, you will have forgotten that you started there. Then any kind of context you were hoping to build up is removed immediately with the cut to “before that…” Any time a movie does this I immediately groan internally. It’s generally bad screen writting.