 For the second time in two months, Sean Penn is receiving rave reviews -- along with an ensemble of other fine actors -- for his performance in a "dark" movie. Some critics have observed that last month's Mystic River and Penn's new film, 21 Grams, have a lot in common besides the actor. The theme of both films, for example, is loss and vengeance. Critics are sparing no superlatives in describing Penn's acting skill in this latest one. Indeed, Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls Penn's performance "superlative" and adds that he, along with fellow stars Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro "create some of the year's richest, most wrenching characters." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News writes: "Standing out once again in a trio of central performers is Sean Penn." (He concludes his review by noting that "21 grams" is what some believers say the soul weighs when it departs from the body at the moment of death. "In contrast," Mathews writes, "the Oscar it might win weighs in at 8 1/2 pounds.") Likewise Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal praises Penn for creating "one of the stand-out performances of his career, layered and exquisitely nuanced. And, remarkably, he's only one-third of a stellar ensemble." Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times writes that the trio "achieve something that doesn't sound as if it's possible: a virtuosity in the depiction of people wasting away minute by minute. Be prepared for it. You won't come out unaffected, because the depths of intimacy that the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu plumbs here are so rarely touched by filmmakers that 21 Grams is tantamount to the discovery of a new country." One hundred eighty degrees away from those assessments is Wesley Morris's in the Boston Globe, who comments that Iñárritu has created a movie that "is sprayed with an aerosol of grandeur to cover up the odor of pulp." |
