Boy what an afternoon (it’s okay, I watched Napoleon Dynamite again after this). This makes a great movie double with Man on Fire, in fact, both concern loss and revenge, both deal with it in a completely different fashion.

Personally, I couldn’t bring myself to rate this movie as highly as others have. The acting is terrific, sure. The thoughts and emotions it concerns are important, heavy, thought-provoking. But a lot of movies have covered this ground, and you can’t not find good acting in movies like this – I think good acting pretty much comes natural when you’re meant to be acting that your entire family has been wiped out… that’s kind of human, not talent (no disrespect to the actors here, they’re still incredible, I’m just trying to put some perspective on the whole thing). The “I have your husband’s heart,” storyline, too, has been covered, probably many times, but I think of Return to Me, which I would personally rather watch.

That seems weird to me. There’s times I love these hard-ass gritty realistic “arty” movies but at the time I watched 21 Grams I found myself comparing it to the ultra-slick Tony Scott’s Man on Fire and the ultra-cheesy Return to Me. So go figure, that’s just my personal take. I also had In the Bedroom in mind, which deals with similar subject matter in a similarly adult fashion, without the hectic time-jumps.

21 Grams is a terrific movie. It’s just not my cup of tea right now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2004 at 7:34 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.