Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros) teams up again with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, this time for a global trilogy that interweaves multiple characters over a five-day span. Filmed on location in Morocco, San Diego and Tokyo and in told in four languages (five, counting sign language), "Babel" is a compelling tale that delineates how mistakes and lapses in judgment can have unintended and unimaginable consequences.

From the opening, it's clear that Iñárritu’s latest is going to be a different playing field; instead of a horrifying car accident kicking off the story – as in Amores Perros (2001) and 21 Grams (2003) – it’s a horrific gun accident.

The plot follows six families, most of them not known to one another, whose tales are woven together in ways that are not always immediately apparent: an American couple traveling in Morocco, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), the Hispanic caretaker for their children (Adriana Barraza) and a deaf-mute girl in Japan (Rinko Kikuchi), all of whom become linked by a brutal accident: two Moroccan boys (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) argue about who is better with the rifle that their dad purchased to kill the jackals threatening his herd. One boy fires a shot toward a passing bus, but the bullet hits the worst possible target: American tourist Susan (Blanchett).

The injured Susan and husband Richard are then stranded in a small desert town waiting for help to arrive as the U.S. government overreacts. With Morocco being a Muslim country that depends on Western tourists, the authorities are eager go on terrorist alert.