I don't watch movies for the performances, or for their artistic value, which is probably why I found very little in this. What matters to me is the story, and this movie doesn't seem to have one. It is a mismacthed patchwork of unrelated storylines, if I can even call them that, from differenet parts of the world, that are supposed to entertain. Well, they didn't entertain me in the slightest. After all the hype I found this to be a turgid, pointless and disappointing movie. I can't see what all the fuss is about. I don't like clever, arty films for the sake of it, so I don't like 'Babel'.

This is a not a review of the movie, we know how great it is, but of the blu ray transfer. I did side by side comparison, and blu ray is not such a noticeable improvement from upscaled dvd (w/ HDMI). Blu ray just seems grainier and harsher. If you already have the DVD, save yourself $20.

{{{I see my review above has not been helpful. Hence, addendum 05/03/10 below to provide more edification.}}}

The manner in which the analysis was conducted was as follows. The time is at night, (room darkened), but w/ recessed lights graded barely hued to simulate subtle twilight. Several different scenes were chosen to allow a spread of variety: bright, dark, and fast motion scenes.

The medium used are as follows: 65" Panasonic 1080p Plasma S Series, TC-P65S1, with 2 Panasonic DMP-BD60 blu ray players side by side running subsequently synchronized w/ the TV inputs alternating between the two HDMI cables. The picture mode is at standard settings, not vivid. All specs pre-calibrated w/ Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics [Blu-ray] at the time of TV installation. With my glasses, I have 20/20 vision.

The Babel blu ray has been released 2 separate times, on June 3, 2008; then the reprint on December 16, 2008. For your clarification, I will include the ASIN # of the one I received from Amazon: B000MCH5TK.

This same pattern of consistent comparison is done as I receive each of my newly ordered blu rays replacing my dvd's. In my current collection, vast stunning jaw dropping improvements have been seen in the following blu ray: Requiem for a Dream, Planet Earth, Jackal, Chronos, and Heathers. However, only subtle improvements were seen in Phantom of the Opera, Juno, Universe Seasons 1-4, and Truman Show. Disappointing, little or no improvement were seen in Babel, March of the Penguins, and My Cousin Vinny. My goal here is to inform, contribute reviews, and save you guys time & $.

An ominous shot in the Moroccan hinterlands echoes in a Mexican village, cracks across Tokyo`s metallic skyline. Are the consequences of our actions so interconnected, so inextricable from one another? According to Alejandro Inarritu`s masterful creation, `Babel,` the answer is yes.

Few plots are as labyrinthine as `Babel`s,` and even fewer manage to remain as comprehensible and engaging as this one. An impoverished Moroccan family of goat herders barters for a new hunting rifle to help protect their flocks. The herder`s sons taunt each other into ever greater feats of marksmanship when a fateful target looms into view: a tourist bus lumbering up a mountain highway. His turn to trump his brother`s paltry aim, the younger son pulls the trigger and soon sets off an avalanche of unforeseen consequences.

The stray bullet finds home in an embittered American housewife (Cate Blanchett), angered and confused as to why she and her husband (Brad Pitt) are sweating things out in such a desolate destination. The renegade shot stops such musing short as she slowly bleeds out and her husband`s increasingly ugly American behavior takes over. An American shot in an Islamic backwater...it must be `terrorists.`

As the bus veers into a nearby village for medical assistance, the shot sounds an echo heard worlds away. Tokyo police search out the original owner of the rifle, while the American couple`s children back in Southern California are shuffled off to their Mexican housekeeper`s (Adriana Barraza) Baja village for her son`s wedding. Sound convoluted? Preposterous? Unlikely in the extreme? As Innaritu`s skilled direction weaves the storyline ever deeper, your disbelief becomes thoroughly suspended as the improbable, the impossible comes to life.

As Tokyo`s police track down the gun`s owner, his deaf-mute daughter (Rinko Kikuchi in a truly heart-wrenching debut performance) unloads a Pandora`s box of hidden pain. Deprived a mother by suicide, Kikuchi`s character is adrift in a world that neither understands her nor she it. The film shows that even when words are clear and intelligible, they rarely mirror the truth of our desires and needs. Kikuchi`s character is a pathetic case in point. Treated as an outcast by the speaking world around her, her hunger for human connection intensifies. She screams for contact, yet nobody listens. She finally resorts to the only language left her, her physical body, to convey her loneliness and hunger for connection. Yet, those confronted by her glaring behavior and physical directness miss the deeper message. Signals are misread, and meanings get lost in translation. She, like all the film`s characters, gets lost in a babel of words bereft their true message.

Innaritu`s film shows a human community stumbling ever further away from comprehension, from connection. Botched transmissions and fumbled receptions clutter each frame. Lies overlap lies until words are but empty vessels, stripped of content. In the village where Pitt`s character scurries helplessly, English-language television networks ramble on about `terrorist cells` and an `American tourist killed` (she survives). When the Moroccan gendarmes descend upon the goat herder's family, misinformation swarms like flies. The police thugs beat up those whose `answers` make no sense. As the housekeeper returns from Mexico with her American charges, her nephew (the fiery Gael Garcia Bernal) engages in a verbal cat-and-mouse game with the border guards until chaos overcomes. The housekeeper, with her limited English, is unable to clarify an otherwise straightforward situation. Confusion spreads like a cancer and the consequences approach the catastrophic.

Despite the cacophony of voice and miscue, `Babel` does not descend into absolute despair. Innaritu does offer hope that understanding is still possible. The children of this film carry its redemption. Throughout the film, they knowingly and unknowingly set right the confusions adults sow. The housekeeper talks to her American ninos in Spanish and they passively, instinctively comprehend. In the Moroccan village, while parents and police turn to violence, the youngest son (Mohamed Akhzam in an amazing performance) ends the mayhem by divulging the truth the adults have failed to grasp.

`Babel` ends painfully, tragically. A boy chocks the wheel of violence but not without a horrible price. A housekeeper saves her charges but loses her freedom. A lonely girl threatens suicide. What makes these moments all the more pathetic is that they could have been avoided. Innaritu suggests our babel of tongues, customs, and walls deny us the chance of celebrating our common humanness. The best we can hope for is support from those closest to us, namely our own flesh and blood. The muted, misunderstood teen clings to her father, the hapless American tourists realize their children hold the keys to contentment, the deported housekeeper finds refuge in her son`s arms, and the Moroccan father grieves a murdered son, saved perhaps an even worse fate.

While Innaritu`s political subtext may grate some viewers the wrong way (Are American lives worth more?), don`t let that scare you away from a provocative, thoughtful and emotionally enriching experience. While the big names (Pitt and Blanchett) fill the film`s minor roles, it is the unknowns and child actors who deliver `Babel`s` masterful performances. `Babel` celebrates those outside the Hollywood pale...the Bernals... the Barazas... the Kikuchis... the Akhzams. Combined with Gustavo Santaolalla`s evocative soundtrack (a great follow up to his Brokeback Mountain work) and Rodriego Prieto`s lush, encompassing panoramas of Sahel scrabble and Tokyo steel, their all too human portrayals make `Babel` a film for the ages.

I am not a paid reviewer. There are some good performances in this, mostly of the child actors, and the dialogue sounds realistic which is a refreshing change for Hollywood. However, the plot is interminable and the time it takes for the tale to spin doesn't justify the message being delivered by the film. It seems like a film that the actors wanted to do, not that the audience wanted to see.

There are four vignettes here - two in Morocco, one in Southern California and Mexico, and one in Japan. It's the path of a rifle that loosely binds the tales together. [Some of it's a stretch, frankly.] I enjoyed three of the plotlines, especially the Japanese stuff. Rinko Kikuchi is spectacular as a deaf mute teenager, and it's a treat to see Kôji Yakusho. [Who can forget him in Shall We Dance?] Director Alejandro González Iñárritu does his best work in those scenes I think. As spectacular as the Moroccan mountainside scenes are, the passages from Kikuchi's viewpoint are fabulous...as are his sequences that get to the heart of the unrelenting crush of Tokyo life.

Like Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga's partnership in 21 Grams, Babel is anything but linear in its telling. Tony Gilroy does the same thing in Michael Clayton (Widescreen Edition) and Duplicity, but he gives you little cues ("2 weeks earlier"...that type of thing). González Iñárritu and Arriaga don't do that. Until you catch on it can be confusing. The viewer needs to piece the sequence together. After you get it, it's neat to watch it all fall together.

The one part of the film I soured on: any time Brad Pitt appeared on screen. I'm not anti-Brad Pitt. I've enjoyed him in many things. But here, he's visibly straining To Be Meaningful in an Important Movie. It's off-putting. Whenever Iñárritu went back to him, I twiddled my thumbs, looked elsewhere...and waited for the focus to shift back to characters for whom I cared.