I really, really didn’t like this movie. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, as it occasionally flashed signs of brilliance and was generally nice to look at. But Babel regularly falls well short of the mark and ends up being 140 minutes of self-importance as sterile as the desert in which it is largely set.

I was looking forward to seeing it, not really knowing anything about it, other than it was another good movie from an already-acclaimed young director. Unfortunately, the movie was uninspired, cliched and plain uninteresting. I didn’t care much for the characters (with the exception of a fun performance by two children, Nathan Gamble and Elle Fanning). The storylines were varied from mildly interesting (never gripping) to annoying. By the time Iñárritu tied it all together, it would have required a Sixth Sense-type reveal to salvage the movie; instead, like the rest of the movie, the promise of payoff FAR outweighs the payoff itself. The movie kept building the suspense and moving the story, but never toward a climax.
1.5 stars — I’d say it stole 2.5 hours of my life, but I try not to be such a victim.