21 Grams is a 2003 drama directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro.

Like Arriaga's and González Iñárritu's previous movie, Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams is a movie which interweaves several plot lines, this time around the consequences of a tragic automobile accident. Penn plays a critically ill academic mathematician, Watts plays a grief stricken mother, and del Toro plays an ex-convict whose newly discovered Christianity is sorely tested in the aftermath of an accident.

The movie was shot in chronological order, but is edited in a non-linear arrangement where the lives of the characters are depicted before and after the accident. The three main characters each have 'past' 'present' and 'future' story threads, which are shown as non-linear fragments that punctuate elements of the overall story, all imminently coming toward each other and coalescing as the story progresses. Iñárritu may have been influenced by the silent film Intolerance (1916), though his approach is more complex.

This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers (Penn) an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English emigré (Gainsbourg), Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan (Del Toro), an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably, forever. Written by Miguel Cane (Stepford@yahoo.com)