21 GRAMS
Year: 2003
USA: Focus Features
UK: Icon Film Distribution
Cast: Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Danny Huston, Clea DuVall, Chance Romero, Marc Musso, David Chattam, Teresa Delgado, Stephen W Bridgewater, Kevin Chapman, Carlo Alban, Alex Blagg, Paul Calderon, Harmony Carrigan, Jerry Chipman, Annie Corley, Verda Davenport, Catherine Dent, Melissa Leo, Eddie Marsan, Denis O'Hare, Jennifer Pfalzgraff, John Rubinstein, Jessica Scott, Arron Shiver, Lauren Nicole Smith, Lew Temple, Arita Trahan
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Country: USA
USA & UK: 125 mins
USA Rated: R for language, sexuality, some violence and drug use
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, moderate sex, violence and drug use
USA Release Date: 21 November 2003 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 5 March 2004
Synopsis
21 GRAMS is the new film from the Academy Award-nominated director of AMORES PERROS, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It is a story of hope and humanity, of resilience and survival.
Whether you fear death or not, it comes, and at that moment your body becomes twenty-one grams lighter. Is it a person's soul that constitutes those twenty-one grams? Is that weight carried by those who survive us?
The lead actors in 21 GRAMS are three-time Academy Award nominee Sean Penn, Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, and award-winning actress Naomi Watts. The actors were all honored at the film's world premiere at the 2003 Venice International Film Festival, where Sean Penn won Best Actor and Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts earned the Audience Awards for Best Actor and Actress.
21 GRAMS, written by Guillermo Arriaga (AMORES PERROS), explores the emotionally and physically charged existences of three people over a period of several months. An accident unexpectedly throws their lives and destinies together, in a story that will take them to the heights of love, the depths of revenge, and the promise of redemption.
College professor Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) and his wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) find their union precariously balanced between life and death. He is mortally ill and awaiting a heart transplant, while she hopes to become pregnant with his child through artificial insemination. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), having matured since her reckless past, is a beloved older sister to Claudia (Clea DuVall), a good wife to Michael (Danny Huston) and loving mother to two little girls. Her family radiates hope and joy. Much farther down the socioeconomic scale, ex-con Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) and his wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) struggle to provide for their two children while Jack reaffirms his commitment to religion.
A tragic accident that claims several lives places these couples in each other's orbit. In the aftermath, Paul confronts his own mortality, Cristina takes action to come to terms with her present and perhaps her future, and Jack's faith is put to the test. If spiritual equilibrium is to be regained by any one of them, it could come at great cost to the others. Yet the will to live, and the instinct to reach out to another person for support, remains ever-present among them all.