Babel

THE TRANSPORTER 2 is a better moviegoing experience than BABEL.

BABEL teaches us that guns are bad: look for a young Moroccan boy destroying a gun in a climactic fit of fury, sadness, and despair. THE TRANSPORTER 2 teaches us that guns are for losers: real men use car-fu, firehose fu, bead curtain fu, sword fu, lead pipe fu, axe fu, coconut fu, boat fu, and Gulfstream IV fu, just to name a, er, few. BABEL features heartbreaking turns from a brilliant cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, and some cat from SNATCH. THE TRANSPORTER 2 features evil foreigners, anorexic models, and some cat from SNATCH kicking people in the face. BABEL features a girl in a schoolgirl outfit flashing her Britney at random Japanese schoolboys. THE TRANSPORTER 2 featurs a girl in a schoolgirl outfit who jacks cars with a gang of cartoonish thugs. And speaking of girls, all BABEL can give us is a clothing-challenged girl weeping on her father's shoulder, while THE TRANSPORTER 2 delivers a clothing-challenged girl in heavy mascara wielding dual automatic weapons and laying down the aforementioned bead curtain fu.

All kidding aside, BABEL is two hours of the anticipation of horror, horror, and despair. Its painfulness is outweighed only by its heavyhandedness, with self-absorbed first-worlders weighed against salt-of-the-earth second-worlders. Not only did I feel that this film was trying to manipulate me into a decidedly unpleasant emotional place, but I thought that it was doing so dishonestly. And really, enough of these "hyperlink films." I liked SHORT CUTS as much as the next guy, but there's no joy in discovering the connections the film lays out before us. Just tell me a story, goshdarnit. Entertain me. Teach and enlighten me if you can, but don't preach at me. And if you can manage it, try and mix in a little cocounut fu. Coconut fu does wonders for any film.