21 Grams: Critic Reviews

It's a startlingly crafted movie, with several extraordinary performances.

You won't come out unaffected, because the depths of intimacy that the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu plumbs here are so rarely touched by filmmakers that 21 Grams is tantamount to the discovery of a new country.

Unstintingly explores and exposes excruciating pain, raw grief, ruinous vengeance and life-affirming resilience, creating human portraits that are uncommonly exhilarating in their honesty.

Tough, smart, relentless, provocative and, above all, serious.

If not for its show-offy back-and- forthing of time, the movie would be a banal, pointlessly depressing exercise.

A capital-M movie, and the most flagrant kind: Heavy emotion, heavy style, and lite philosophy converge and choke us with meaning.

Watts, who has the most difficult scenes, is splendidly mercurial; what's surprising is that those professional storm clouds Penn and Del Toro are here as powerfully restrained as she is electrifying.

Using the structure of Amores Perros, Inarritu takes his complex tale of hope and redemption and breaks it into a mosaic of emotional tiles that add up to more than the whole.

Establishes [Inarritu] as a major cinematic force.

Boasts so many moments of sublime acting that it's hard to know where to start.

It grips us, moves us, astonishes us.

Blessed with one of the strongest casts of any American movie this year, this bravura film, with its radical structure, is full of risk and reward.

Challenges and provokes in unexpected ways.

This is a mesmerizing film that is the work of genius.

The performances, the way Inarritu deconstructs and reconstructs the narrative, the grainy, gritty feel and look, all lead to the rare sort of experience that only a truly great film can offer.

Every year needs a challenging masterwork, a movie that defies filmmaking convention and leaves an indelible mark on the collective psyche.

Confounded my high expectations by being much too depressing for my taste.

A sad movie about the irony of inescapable destiny, it left me captivated and trembling.

The title refers to the weight -- perhaps the soul -- the body is said to lose at the precise moment of death. But 21 Grams has no shortage of soul, wit or intelligence.

Fascinating because of the way the story is told -- and because of the existential issues that it forces you to consider.

This is cinematic storytelling of a very high order, and the clear work of a moviemaker who has almost instantly established himself as a force to be reckoned with.

Though not depressing, because nothing this good is, the film is haunting -- a walk on the razor's edge between life and death.

Watching Penn and Del Toro (and, to a lesser extent, the actually young and actually beautiful Watts) navigate the recesses of these damaged, ambivalent characters ... is pretty much worth the price of admission.