After Amores Perros and 21 Grams director Alejandro González Iñárritu established himself as the undeniable king of the multi-strand narrative. In Babel, the scope is larger but he again employs his favourite structural technique to explore his theme. However, it is with the mention of the word ‘theme’ that Babel hits a problem – for its lack of thematic clarity is in fact its major flaw.

Telling the story of 3 family units, Babel opens in Morocco, where a goat herder buys a rifle for his sons with tragic consequences. The boys attempts to test the range of the gun lead to the killing of American tourist Susan (Cate Blanchett) which sparks an international ‘situation’. Meanwhile back home, Susan’s children are taken to a wedding in Mexico by their loving illegal immigrant nanny, which all goes fine until they attempt a late night border crossing on the journey home…

And the final piece of the puzzle is provided by Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), the deaf-mute daughter of a Japanese businessman, whose role in the unfolding Morocco storyline only becomes apparent in the last act of the film. This particular story is the most fragmented of them all, and although moving and insightful in its own right, often struggles to match the pace and impending sense of crisis inherent in the other narrative strands.

As Susan’s husband Richard (Brad Pitt) nurses his dying wife, and the Moroccan herder attempts to protect his guilty sons, a clear point is made about the ‘chaos effect’ that a single wayward bullet can cause. But aside from this there is a lack of cohesion to the film as a whole which makes it pale in comparison to another film of this type, Crash.

The cinematography is stunning and the acting is generally excellent (although someone should have told Brad Pitt that ‘arthouse acting’ doesn’t just mean whispering every line), one is left at the end with a feeling that perhaps this film is all style and no real substance.

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