Second Comings

To the fleet of symbolic vehicles currently cruising the screen--their number includes the "Pussy Wagon" that Uma Thurman (in Kill Bill) coldly claims as her own--we may now add Benicio Del Toro's pickup in 21 Grams. As Jack, an incompetent petty criminal who has found religion, Del Toro wins the truck in a contest and paints the message "FAITH Jesus Saves" across its tailgate, perhaps out of pride as much as a spirit of Christian witness. "Jesus gave me that truck," he insists fiercely, early in the film, to someone whose belief is less aggressive than his own. If so, then Jesus must have had a dark purpose in handing over the keys. 21 Grams is the story of how Jack's Salvation-mobile wipes out three lives and leads to the protracted ruination of three more.

As directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros) from a screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga, 21 Grams makes a picture-puzzle out of this moral tale, teasing you with a scrambled chronology. The film begins by offering discontinuous glimpses of three unconnected characters, then flashes a preview of the climactic moment, when all three somehow come together in a bloody motel room. You understand that the worst has already happened. The trick is to figure out when, where and why the primal scene plays out, and perhaps to guess whether Jesus saves any of these people.

I can see why many viewers have found this to be a puzzle worth solving. Piece together the theme, and you see that 21 Grams is about people who get the second chance we all want but would most likely flub. Jack, who has been released from jail, at first makes a go of the straight life but then drives his new faith smack into disaster. Cristina (Naomi Watts) overcomes a drug habit and achieves domestic happiness; but later, under a burden of grief, she crumples catastrophically. Most dramatic, or melodramatic, of the three characters is Paul (Sean Penn), who literally gets a new life, through a heart transplant operation, yet goes on with his killing old ways.

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