Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (June 3, 2025)
After his feature debut Amores perres made a splash in 2000, director Alejandro González Iñárritu immediately got invited to Go Hollywood. This led to his US debut via 2003’s 21 Grams.
Ex-convict Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) embraces Christianity as a path out of his substance abuse and ugly past. Math professor Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) suffers from a heart condition that will kill him soon if he doesn’t receive a transplant.
Former drug addict Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) rehabilitates and lives a sedate suburban life with husband Michael (Danny Huston) and daughters Cathy (Carly Nahon) and Laura (Claire Pakis). Jack, Paul and Cristina all end up intertwined as the result of a tragic accident.
Iñárritu’s career undoubtedly peaked via the one-two punch of 2014’s Birdman and 2015’s The Revenant. Iñárritu won back-to-back Best Director Oscars for these films, and Birdman also took home the Best Picture trophy.
Apparently a bit burned out after Revenant, Iñárritu has largely remained idle over the last decade. He shot a yet-untitled Tom Cruise flick due in the fall of 2026, but otherwise, the Mexico-produced Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths exists as his sole work since his two Oscar victories.
In this context, it becomes interesting to revisit the early days of Iñárritu’s cinematic career. Placed between Amores and 2006’s Babel, Grams offered the second in what got called the director’s “Trilogy of Death”.
I never saw Amores, but I liked Babel. Like that film, Grams takes a few unconnected lives and finds ways to bring them together.
While Babel did this in an evocative and intriguing manner, the technique fares less well for Grams. Rather than create a compelling view of events, the end product tends to just seem scattered and somewhat confusing.
Though not to a terrible degree. Although the leaps in chronology can become a bit befuddling, they integrate well enough to cause only occasional distractions.
Actually, one benefit comes from the non-linear narrative: it forces the viewer to pay closer attention. With so many shifts in time, it seems more necessary to concentrate.
Unfortunately, the end result doesn’t really reward the added effort. The story seems contrived too much of the time and it wanders down too many soap opera paths.
Not that Grams ever becomes a campy melodrama, as Iñárritu maintains a serious tone throughout the film. Nonetheless, the plot beats lean sudsy.
As noted, Iñárritu avoids cheap cinematic emotional manipulation, and a quality cast tones down the melodrama inherent in the story.
Nonetheless, the final product doesn’t dig into its core themses as well as it should. This means the unconventional structure can come across as a crutch.
While these choices succeeded in Babel, here the non-linear elements come across as a gimmick. They add little to the narrative’s impact and simply muddy the waters too much of the time.
Perhaps Iñárritu sensed that the core story of Grams needed to be goosed and this was his attempt to do so. Or maybe he felt the tale required the leaps in time to succeed but he simply lacked the polish needed to pull it off at that stage in his career.
Whatever the case, Grams doesn’t quite hit the mark. Despite a good cast and interesting thematic threads related to tragedy, revenge and forgiveness, the end result doesn’t coalesce well enough to create a compelling drama.
