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 After the powerful Amores Perros, and his harrowing contribution to the omnibus movie September 11, Alejandro González Iñ árritu’s 21 Grams is a comedown. It’s forceful, to be sure, but in a lurid way that suggests a telenovela that’s been baking in the sun too long. Sean Penn plays a sickly, prickly mathematician who is rejuvenated by a heart transplant. His marriage, however, is still on the rocks. “I thought you’d change after the transplant!” says his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and it’s just one of many post-operative indignities he must close his ears to. He seeks out the identity of his heart donor, which leads him to Naomi Watts’s Cristina, a reformed drug addict whose own family life has been upended by horrendous tragedy. Entwined in all this is the story of Jack (Benicio Del Toro), an ex-convict who has found Jesus, though his wife (Melissa Leo) liked him better before. A car accident ties the stories together in somewhat the same way as in Amores Perros, which was also written by Guillermo Arriaga. But that film was like an incendiary device; 21 Grams—the title refers to the weight one supposedly loses upon death, the weight of the soul—sputters out in a farrago of flashbacks and flashforwards and flashinbetweens. The one signal achievement is Del Toro’s performance, which is ferocious and hearty. No transplant needed here.
(2 hrs., 5mins.; NR)
—PETER RAINER
Opens November 21
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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