Babel

Babel is basically a film of telling four separate manipulative stories. Now all films technically are manipulative, or at least try to be, however this film seems particularly obvious in intentions with every story focusing on extreme emotions. The only thing that can really save it are some performances to provide at least a bit of nuance making their characters into people rather than just puppets to be wrong through a wringer. Well they don't all pull it off, some do very well, but that even can go only so far, and the film's whole attempt in finding some sort of understanding of a troubled connected world feels wholly inadequate and simplistic. It's not a terrible film, but it's not a very good one. Also it won best score for a song from the Last Emperor since that's the only part of the score that stands out.
2.5/5