Three movies in and Alejandro González Iñárritu seems in danger of becoming a one-trick pony. Babel is so similar in tone, style, and narrative gimmickry to his first two movies, Amores Perros and 21 Grams, that if you'd seen those two and didn't know he directed the third, you'd be able to guess it immediately. Lucky for him, the first two were largely considered good movies, with intense drama and excellent acting; however, they were also a bit dense, with 21 Grams in particular feeling like somewhat of an endurance test and a frustrating puzzle.

Therefore, it's even more fortunate for González Iñárritu that Babel comes across as his most accessible and well-paced feature yet. Or perhaps luck has nothing to do with it as the director continues to hone his skills, streamlining his daring storytelling method so that his parallel threads match each other in rhythm even as they occur at different times -- in fact, leaving the timelines some room to be figured out in terms of where they are in relation to one another turns out to be a rewarding experience. González Iñárritu's movies are a model of how to keep viewers involved, an all-too necessary skill since he traffics so much in the unpleasant shared experiences of human grief.

In Babel's case, grief isn't the only unifying factor in its four distinct stories. As the film's title would suggest, one of its major themes involves barriers to communication, yet simply stating it that way would be limiting. The movie is about the dynamics of other differences that come with difference in language, i.e. differences in culture, social classification, and attitudes toward others and toward oneself. To go further, sometimes language isn't even the main obstruction here, as Babel takes equal opportunity to show the flip side -- that even when we speak the same language, we communicate poorly to each other, sometimes with dreadful consequences.

And, of course, we are also shown the idea that though we may all speak different languages and live in different environments, many of our experiences are the same. Hence, story number one takes place in Morocco, where the different personalities of two youthful brothers (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) create a disdainfully competitive relationship that results in a stupid mistake. That mistake affects two American tourists (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett) in Morocco in the second story, where the wife becomes critically wounded and the husband finds more sympathy and cooperation from a village native than his fellow European and American tourists. The scenarios share a strong sense of panic and depicts the lengths family members will go to in order to protect loved ones.

Panic also eventually emrges in the third story, concerning a Mexican housemaid (Adriana Barraza) whose American employer has demanded that she stay one more day with his children; however, her son's wedding in Mexico is that day, so she makes a hasty decision to cross the border with the children in tow. Finally, in Japan, a teenage deaf-mute girl (Rinko Kikuchi) grows increasingly frustrated that, despite being a generally healthy, active, and attractive teen, the cute boys will look at her differently because of her handicap. She's constantly enraged and lets it out in ways that would be unbecoming for a young lady.

As one can tell from these descriptions of plot and themes, González Iñárritu's movie is ambitious in scope from the beginning -- but is it too ambitious? Because Babel contains four stories all about so many different things, sometimes the overwhelming feeling one gets is that it's all relatively random and that it would be futile to make sense of the whole. The movie isn't entirely successful at feeling consistent. The inclusion of the Japanese story in particular feels a bit out of place -- culturally, technologically, and in subject and execution, it's the most different of the tales and  eventually jumps to a drastic development which isn't easily believable, especially in contrast with the actions taken by people in the other three. It's also the most loosely connected, but as nearly all of the tales are fairly loosely connected with each other, one may wonder what the difference might have been if Iñárritu just chose to focus on four entirely random stories with no connection at all.

Thus Babel dares the viewer to find singular themes for all four stories, but I believe González Iñárritu is mainly interested in what humanity is capable of producing, both good and bad, when it is presented with desperate situations. He continues to depict these conflicts at the individual level, and he's not above letting his characters make bad decisions. It's a bit of a challenge for the viewer to watch Babel and not get angry at the characters for doing things we think we would be smart enough not to do in their shoes, but I believe this shows González Iñárritu at his most humanist -- in understanding human weakness and hoping that we can forgive such lapses. At the simplest level, the movie is several dramas told effectively, and processing the emotions in its most dramatic moments may be the best reward in watching it.

(Released by Paramount Classics and rated "R" for violence, some graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.