Benicio Del Toro: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Jack Jordan - 21 Grams (2003)

According to the poster of this award-winning melodrama, 21 grams is the weight we lose when we die - the same weight as a stack of nickels, a chocolate bar, or a hummingbird - with the implication being that's also the weight of the soul, departing to the afterlife as we shuffle off of this mortal coil. Which is obviously a load of nonsense, and quite fitting for director Alejandro González Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga's second collaboration, after the far superior Spanish-language drama Amores Perros. Like their previous film, 21 Grams attempts to deftly interweave the life stories of several different, disparate characters. Only it worked really well there, and doesn't work at all here. Again, this one isn't so much down to del Toro's skills as an actor per se, more the character he got saddled with. Elsewhere in 21 Grams we're expected to care about Sean Penn's dying Mathematics professor, who desperately needs a heart transplant (despite being really bloody annoying and self-righteous) and Naomi Watts as a recovering drug addict who is sent spiralling back into substance abuse when her husband and son get ran over. That's where Benicio comes in as Jack Jordan, an ex-con who rejected his own drug and alcohol dependency thanks to a renewed faith in God. All of which goes out the window when he accidentally kills a kid and his dad, obviously, which is just one example of dozens of unremittingly grim scenes in this movie. We're not saying that all films need to be fun or anything, but give us something to work with here, guys. Especially if you want us to actually emotionally connect with the characters, which we never really do thanks to hackneyed dialogue, unsympathetic motivations and stilted performances.