In a remote mountainous area of southern Morocco, a goatherder purchases a Winchester rifle. He gives the weapon to his sons (non-professional child actors Mohamed Akhzam and Boubker Ait El Caid) and instructs them to protect his flock from jackals. The boys get bored and doubting the rifle can really fire three kilometers, the younger brother, a deadeye, fires on a tourist bus and hits it.

Moving back in time, an American couple played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett vacation in Morocco in an effort to repair a marriage damaged in the aftermath of a miscarriage.

Jumping back to the States and forward in time, live-in nanny Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is unable to find a replacement to watch her charges (Nathan Gamble, Elle Fanning) so that she can attend her son’s wedding in Mexico. She decides to take the children with her south of the border for the day and is shuttled there by her rascal of a nephew (Gael Garcia Bernal).

As promised in the trailer, Blanchett receives a gunshot wound to the chest on a tour bus. Hours from the nearest hospital, the couple are given refuge in the small village of their resourceful guide (Mohamed Akhzam).

While Blanchett’s condition deteriorates, we cut to Japan, where a deaf mute teenage girl (Rinko Kikuchi) acts out feelings of alienation stemming from her mother’s suicide. It’s not until later that we find out how her family is connected to the events in Morocco. Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Amelia, her degenerate nephew and the children encounter a problem trying to return to the United States.

Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, Babel is as vivid and bold a movie as anyone will tell you it is, an automatic entry on any critic’s “Best of 2006″ list and a certain shoe-in for several year-in awards. This is a character epic spanning three continents and five different languages. Movie stars share the screen with lesser known and completely unknown performers.

The brilliance of the movie is in its scope. The superior multi-storyline epics of recent years – Short Cuts, Pulp Fiction, Magnolia – all took place in L.A. and featured characters going in and out of the same diners or hospitals, unaware how their lives impacted their neighbors. Babel has fewer characters, but is far more ambitious, sweeping across a global village and suggesting the same phenomenon can now occur across oceans, cultures and languages.

Arriaga’s screenplay is short on dialogue but rich in vision. It largely avoids politicking or wagging its finger at The Man for the miseries inflicted around the globe. Misfortune in this film comes down to poor decision making on the part of the characters, or just plain bad luck, not from foreign policy. That aspect of the script struck me as far more honest.

Brad Pitt looks over 40 for the first time in his career, but is getting more intense with age . Cate Blanchett employs a flawless American accent and – during a scene where her character numbs her pain by smoking a native pipe – is something else to watch merely acting with her face. Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza should find mention in some awards envelopes.

Like Crash, much of this movie can’t help but feel contrived. A couple with an eroding relationship is believable. Dispatching them to the most remote area of Northern Africa where the wife is shot for no real reason, stranded in a village, while back home, their nanny is deported and their kids are lost in the desert, while in Japan, a teenager is despondent over her mother’s suicide, feels like one of those WWF Battle Royales. It’s just too much to believe at once.

Whatever complaints I had about the film’s probability, its look and feel is really awesome. The lighting and camerawork by director of photography Rodrigo Prieto – who shot 25^th Hour and Brokeback Mountain – and the balanced musical score by Gustavo Santaolalla, both really blew me away.

Babel has more natural, unforced moments of great beauty than any film I’ve seen recently. American children in a foreign country for the first time stare out of a moving car as the sights of Mexico go by them. A deaf teenager enters a dance club and feels the music through the vibrations on the dance floor. The Arab guide refuses cash Pitt offers him as he American boards a helicopter out of the village, their exchange drowned out by the whirl of the rotor blades. Awesome.