21 Grams (2003) – 3.1

An overblown affair passing for “real” drama.  Director Alejandro Inarritu follows up his wildly overrated debut, Amores Perros (2000), by dumping his gritty, tortured, “devastating human tragedy” schtick in some anonymous American town with actors too good for this stuff doing their best Oscar-grubbing.  Naomi Watts plays a soccer mom, Cristina, whose husband and two daughters are run over by a drunken ex-convict, Jack (Benecio del Toro).  Paul (Sean Penn) gets her husband’s transplanted heart and becomes obsessed with helping her gain revenge on her family’s killer.  21 Grams is, at best, an amateurish take on themes done far better and more elegantly by Kieslowski, and Watts is seeming increasingly over-hyped.  Shot in digital and looking every ugly bit like it.