21 Grams [Region 2] | ![21 Grams [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513B73Q568L._SL500_.jpg) | Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Actors: Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, Danny Huston, Carly Nahon
Category: DVD
This item is no longer available
Rating:  273 reviews
Sales Rank: 265060
Format: PAL
Languages: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Running Time: 124 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5050070022476
ASIN: B00029QWI8
Theatrical Release Date: December 26, 2003
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Amazon.com
Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro, two of the most gripping actors around, play wildly different men linked through a grieving woman (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive, The Ring) in 21 Grams. Del Toro (Traffic, The Usual Suspects) delves deep into the role of an ex-con turned born-again Christian, a deeply conflicted man struggling to set right a terrible accident, even at the expense of his family. Penn (Mystic River, Dead Man Walking) captures a cynical, philandering professor in dire need of a heart transplant, which he gets from the death of Watts' husband. 21 Grams slips back in forth in time, creating an intricate emotional web out of the past and the present that slowly draws these three together; the result is remarkably fluid and compelling. The movie overreaches for metaphors towards the end, but that doesn't erase the power of the deeply felt performances. --Bret Fetzer
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 273
 You know you're in trouble when the best looking person in this movie is Sean Penn January 19, 2010
kittykins (boston, ma)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I think this movie could have been better, if, it was shown in order of the events that happened, but it wasen't. The story kept jumping ahead, then going back that made it difficult to follow for me anyway. A lot of new directors do this, makes it seem more artsy. When it would have been better to keep it simple. All the actors seemed sincere in their respective parts. I didn't get the Namoi Watts part, were did her family go?, why didn't she get into grief therapy? It's only a movie, and the director will improve with more experience, hopefully. Enjoy!
 An Extraordinary Film December 25, 2009
Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)
21 GRAMS is a film of such importance that attempting to review it is intimidating. Once in a while a film appears that is a Benchmark, a film that is destined to alter the concept of moviemaking as an art form. That this is only the second film from the obviously prodigiously gifted co-writer and Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ( the strikingly creative and disturbing 'Amores Perros' being his first) serves the craft well in continuing the promise of film as art.
Inarritu enlists the intelligence of his audience and what a partnership that creates! His "style" is called non-linear which merely means that the story of the film is not spoon fed to us in a "this happens, then this resulted, then this altered, then this happened" etc fashion. Inarritu takes advantage of the fact that visual images can hold so much power that the story behind them seems secondary at the moment of viewing only to alert us to THINK as we see bits and pieces of history and result dangling from a mobile, ever in motion. We are led to believe one thing depending on how we relate to the image on the screen, and then we are shown that we misjudged that event as we are given more detail from the past and from the future.
While this technique may sound difficult to follow, Inarritu uses it with such facility that learning the true story being told is similar to the way we are running through life: we see fragments, remember tiny moments, watch the media alter variations of reporting reality, hear gossip, view events with prejudiced eyes, form opinions based on our individual experiences with like events in our own lives, or in other words always be faced with the question of what are the drivers of accidents/fate/destiny/need/passion.
The story is basically one of how three disparate characters' lives complexly intertwine - people who come to a fatal auto crash with very different life patterns. A mathematics professor with severe heart disease, a reformed drug addict mother who happens to be the wife and mother of the victims, and a Bible thumping ex-con who drives the truck that causes the accident. The events that ensue after the crash (the victim a heart transplant donor for the mathematician, the devastation the event has on the perpetrator and on the surviving wife) are the storylines we follow. The ending is an intelligent, shocking surprise and one that alters the way you will view events and people after you leave the story behind.
Inarritu has employed the gifted artists Sean Penn, Benecio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts and each of them gives the most potent performances of their careers to date. It is impossible to single out the strongest one as each actor owns the full spectrum of each character and each performance seems to exude from their innermost core of their talent. Each is powerful, subtle, sensitive, wholly credible and deeply moving. The other cast members are very strong - especially Clea DuVall and Charlotte Gainsbourg who take their seemingly supportive roles to heights of such importance that it seems the story could not progress without them.
The photography is appropriately and conceptually dark and the quality of the picture has a decadent graininess to it that enhances the mood and the perplexing mystery of the story. But in the final analysis it is the magisterial directing talent of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu that is simply mind-boggling. This is a VERY important film, so very much worth the work required from us the audience, and as with most things in life, the more we invest the more we gain. Well worth 10 Stars! Grady Harp, December 09
Life, Death and Resurrection? October 16, 2009
Maximiliano F Yofre (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
This is a hard film to see and understand, nevertheless is outstanding and deserves to be seen.
Film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has developed a complex, tasty and compromised "film d'art". We may trace different stylistic influences on this movie: Quentin Tarantino's (Pulp Friction) non linear time sequence and some touches of Kieslowski's (The Double Life of Veronique) casual but most meaningful encounters between different characters.
Inarritu transforms an ordinary everyday issue in a strange, tangled and puzzling drama.
The story is as follows: there is a sick mathematician waiting for a heart transplant as last resort to survive; there is an ex-con trying to make a new clean life for him and his family; there is a family father taking care of his daughters. Tragedy and fate reunite all these elements into a griping tale.
Main actress and actors in the film perform greatly.
Sean Penn, as the feeble hearted mathematician, is able to express and transmit the anguish of nearly dying man. Afterwards he shows the compulsive need to find who his donor was.
Benicio Del Toro, as the ex-con, presents a very convincing mask of a tormented man trying to overcome his addictions and drawbacks in order to have a new opportunity.
Last but not least, Naomi Watts, as the widow of the donor, gives a performance full of subtleties.
Viewing this movie in DVD gives the unique opportunity to go back to previous scene when you get lost.
This picture is tasty dish for movie fans. Enjoy!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
Great story, well told September 25, 2009
Jean E. Pouliot (Newburyport, MA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Take the stories of three people, etch them on a pane of glass, smash the pane into shards, then rearrange the shards. That's the way this incredible movie is told. A math teacher (Sean Penn), a born again social worker (a haggard-looking Benicio del Toro) and a recently-widowed mom (Naomi Watts) live lives that intersect around a traffic accident and a heart transplant. The story unfolds over the course of the movie, juxtaposing past and present in a display of superb plotting. Aside from the three principals, Melissa Leo (as del Toto's long-suffering wife) and others turn in stunning performances.
The 21 grams of the title refers to an old discredited study that purports that at death, we lose exactly 21 grams of weight, attributable to the soul leaving the body. But the "soul" in question here is less about immortality than about the life force exhibited when people enter each others' lives.
A stunning movie of great art, heart and subtlety.
How much weight do you lose when you die? June 28, 2009
Wild Card (United States)
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's circumstance-centered drama is a sweeping character-driven epic. Del Toro stands out as a born-again Christian who accidently kills a father and his daughters. If you're looking for a film in the same vein as Babel, and Amores Perros- check this out.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 273
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