Publisher's Synopsis
Five movies starring Sean Penn. '21 Grams' (2004) is an award-winning film by the director of 'Amores Perros', Alejandro González Iñárritu. Shot mainly with a hand-held camera, and following a non-linear plot line, the film captures the immediacy and confusion of the moments before, during and after a horrific accident that causes the lives of three disparate people to become interwined. Penn plays Paul Rivers, a mathematics teacher facing up to his pending death from a heart problem, while his distant wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) hopes to become pregnant from artificial insemination. Naomi Watts is Cristina, mother of two little girls who has overcome a drug-dependent past to achieve a stable, happy marriage and family life. Benicio del Toro plays Jack Jordan, an ex-criminal who has now found Jesus and is struggling to provide for his wife and their two children in a poor area of the town. When tragedy strikes, all three characters must re-evaluate their lives in the face of death. The title refers to the 21 grams a person loses at the moment of death, thought to be the weight of the human soul. In 'Taps' (1981), when a college is threatened with closure, a group of young cadets must barricade themselves in, declaring a state of siege in an attempt to save it. 'Dead Man Walking' (1995) is based on the true story of Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), a nun who communicates with prisoners on Death Row. When she corresponds with Matthew Poncelet (Penn), a man condemned for killing a young couple, helping him to mount an appeal of innocence, she encounters someone who challenges her most basic beliefs. Can she persuade Poncelet to confess his crime and repent before the fateful day of his execution arrives? In 'Colors' (1988), Bob Hodges (Robert Duvall), a veteran cop nearing retirement, and Danny McGavin (Penn), a rookie know-it-all, are reluctantly teamed together on the L.A.P.D.'s C.R.A.S.H. unit when they investigate a brutal gang murder. They soon find themselves involved in a dangerous turf war, and are forced to put their differences aside in an attempt to keep each other alive. Dennis Hopper directs. In 'State of Grace' (1990), Irish-American Terry (Penn) returns to his old neighbourhood, after a mysterious absence. He is reunited with his childhood friend Jackie (Gary Oldman), now working in arson and extortion rackets, but a possible alliance with an Italian mob brings trouble for Terry's friends, and Terry himself might not be all he says he is. Based on a real-life New York gang, The Westies, who ruled 'Hell's Kitchen' during the 1970s.
