Review of 21 Grams (2003) by Alvin Y — 14 Jun 2011

Very good but most of the whole film is very messy and unfair. You knowtge setup so no need to tell the plot once again. As if you're watching 3 episodes of a soap opera then turns out to be connected or similar to each other, how? Because this is the kind of film that tells us about the characters reactions and emotions to this one accident that almost made them so unexceptional.

The performances of Penn, Watts, and Del Toro are brilliant, and each of them has stories about despair and guilt, that is also about having a dysfunctional spouses. That's what I like in 21 Grams, the director uses most of his time to take us to his world where we can explore about how much would they take or risk everything to get a better and a stable life.

Well, out of all these good things, there are also a lot of very unconvincing things. I just don't really understand, why the director uses jump scenes, that is going back and forth, as if these characters already knew everything before we do, not until the end.

I wish this film could have been told in a chronological order, or else our brains will be shuffled to this and to that very imporant scene. Like for example, how come Penn is at a hospital, then a few seconds, he's at a house, with his wife, what the hell? I also remember one of the best films that I've seen that relates the theme to this movie, and that is "Hereafter", that movie was brilliant and the stories that are told are in order and very well told and slow paced, unlike this one, it is not even steady nor balanced, it goes on and on to something we might see towards the end or something we might have missed, well this film has a lot of missed, editing is really bad.

And again lastly, why the film is called 21 Grams, maybe life or death is weigh more or less or exactly 21 Grams, but what does it scale? I don't know!!