Well, it took me a little longer than a year to get around to watching this a second time but I feel the distance (from Awards Season if nothing else) helped a lot – knowing where the dots are joined, however, definitely makes a second viewing more revealing.

The huge thing that prevented me from hands down adoring this movie the first time I saw it was, as I think was true for many others, the Rinko Kikuchi storyline, the entirely looser connection to “the whole” compared to the other threads being the main reason. Even that first viewing, I still wanted to overlook that flaw because the story in itself, primarily due to Kikuchi’s astonishingly moving performance, was the one that really got to me the most. That’s still true – but I realised something else about it this time around that makes overlooking the flaw entirely unnecessary. If you just look at the movie thematically rather than as interconnected stories, really, the Kikuchi storyline is perfectly connected to the whole. I won’t elaborate any more than that, there’s tons of speculation on the IMDb etc and it should really be left to the individual to make up their own mind.

The editing really struck me on this viewing too, the transitions between the stories are really old school juxtaposition, like from laughing Japanese schoolgirls to herding goats, the headless chicken in Mexico going to the wounded Blanchett on the bus, Blanchett screaming as her wound is stitched up to silence in Japan (and there, too, from a dodgy-looking needle to sterilized dental instruments), it sells the diversity of cultures across the world superbly in this manner and subtly (okay, not so subtly at times) guides your mind into joining the dots and drawing the message out. It’s perfect, even better a second time around.

December 21st, 2006:

“I’m not bad – I just did a stupid thing.”

Like Little Children, this one is just great in ways I can’t begin to start on after a first viewing. It covers so many things, so many stories, so many characters, so many places, but it’s never too much or too hard to follow. The performances are brilliant, most notably Brad Pitt and Rinko Kikuchi, even though I didn’t quite get the relevance of her story on this viewing (I get it, her dad had the gun, but it just didn’t strike me as being as important to the whole tapestry as the other threads – not that that stopped it from moving me). A movie I’ll definitely be watching again next year and I’ll write more then.

I’m not sure I got as much out of this as some, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more gripped from start to finish than I was during pretty much any given movie of the past year (okay, maybe 30 Days just pips it). The chase here is extraordinarily visceral, delivering bucketloads of the kind of jumpy shock most movies can lay claim to just a handful of with just about every gunshot and jolt having an impact. I hope that if this movie does get the Oscar nominations everyone’s buzzing about, it’s included in the sound categories too.

I guess I’ve got to be honest and say if there’s a reason I’m left a little empty by the movie, it’s ‘cos it lacks two things which, it you look at my faves, are kind of important to me: heart and music. So it’s not the movie’s fault at all as these two absences are highly deliberate. But it’s very rare a movie without one or both those things can do a thing for me – whereas this one did plenty – so don’t be discouraged by my 4-star rating. Though this movie comes close to that box of movies last year that were technically perfect but delivered nothing “beyond” for me, it never quite gets in.

Javier Bardem is one of the creepiest killers ever to walk the screen and his modus operandi is truly the stuff of nightmares (it’s when you see him open doors with it that makes it even worse). There’s plenty here to bring me back for a second viewing, when I’m sure it might grow on me just as Fargo (which I didn’t get at all on the first view) did. Right now, I do think calling it the Coens’ “best ever!” is a bit of a stretch – I mean, come on, they had about a decade long string of instant modern classics up to Fargo – but it is eons above Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty.

“We are the fucking gringos, aren’t we.”

To say I didn’t expect much from this would be a candidate for understatement of the year. Kevin Kline seemed about the only thing it had going for it and the reviews I’d read were mostly not good. But if this doesn’t eventually pick up as much kudos as a Babel, Crash, or my personal choice for comparison Man on Fire, there’s something wrong in the world of film. This has a perfect pace, the photography is beautiful and – I think it’s becoming my mantra this year – it goes all the way it needs. I loved the slight buddy movie humour between Kline and Cesar Ramos, there is a scene that makes wonderful use of Rufus Wainwright’s “Agnus Dei” (which I never really liked that much, especially as the start of “Want Two” which is otherwise fantastic), and it even has some open ends to ponder. I’m glad to find other people on the IMDb message boards wondering about the boy at the end and the girl who tries to sell Kline Adriana. Is she his daughter, now a part of the system that took her from him? Is that Veronica’s son?