In theaters

“BABEL,” directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, written by Guillermo Arriaga, 143 minutes, rated R.

If you know and love the work of Mexican-born director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, you understand going into his films that you must do so armed with a good deal of trust.

He is a director devoted to developing complex characters and dense story lines around a convoluted technique. For some, the nonlinear haze in which he works can be off-putting. But for those who know that Inarritu is a master at pulling together the impossible, it can be enormously satisfying to watch him pull it off.

He doesn’t wish to do so alone. Mirroring his most obvious influences – Luis Bunuel, Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar (though without the latter’s humor) – he asks his audience to join him in the work of piecing together the difficult narrative. In this canned environment of so many rote movies, that’s a refreshing approach, particularly if there is a satisfying payoff at hand.

In the director’s previous films, the Academy Award-nominated “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams,” the payoffs were huge and emotionally devastating. That’s less the case for “Babel,” but only because his style and his themes have become familiar.

Just as in “Perros” and “Grams,” “Babel” also builds its plot around seemingly disconnected events that slam together toward the end. The film, based on a script by Inarritu’s longtime collaborator Guillermo Arriaga, focuses on four stories, with six different languages used to tell them.

In the Moroccan desert, two boys are given a rifle by their father (Mustapha Rachidi) to protect the family’s goats. In Japan, a deaf girl (Rinko Kikuchi), still reeling from her mother’s suicide, is trying to reconcile her relationship with her father (Koji Yakusho) while she flirts recklessly with the rush of her own sexual awakening.

In San Diego, a Mexican nanny named Amelia (Adriana Barraza, amazing) risks everything by taking her two young, towheaded charges across the border so she can attend her only son’s wedding. Meanwhile, the children’s bickering parents, Susan and Richard (Cate Blanchett and a very good Brad Pitt), are in Morocco on a tour bus when Susan suddenly is shot through the neck.

For the media, the shooting naturally is targeted as a terrorist act. But for us, the question isn’t who did it – we know it was one of the two boys who shot at the tour bus. Instead, the broader question is the significance of that gunshot and how its ramifications will launch a global ripple. It’s that ripple that assembles the film into a surreal sort of order.

Since it’s critical not to reveal too much more, we won’t. Still, key to the success of this disturbing, often harrowing movie goes beyond its Biblical echoes. Additional weight is derived in how Inarritu refuses to spoon-feed his audiences anything. He’d rather you starve than make concessions to his vision. His movie manipulates, but countering that are scenes that genuinely shake and disturb. As with so many of the film’s characters, you leave feeling raw, used up. “Babel” isn’t something you forget on the drive home. Instead, you are compelled to discuss it and how it reflects the state of the world.

Grade: A-

On DVD

“YOU, ME AND DUPREE,” directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, written by Michael Le Sieur, 108 minutes, rated PG-13.

In “You, Me and Dupree,” the “You and Me” of the title are Carl and Molly Peterson (Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson), two newlyweds whose lives should presumably be infused with happiness, love, laughter and plenty of good, uninterrupted sex.

At least for the first year.

But as the film’s title suggests, they also must deal with Dupree (Owen Wilson), Carl’s longtime best friend and the best man at their swanky island wedding whose life, shall we say, is lived a bit more unconventionally than most.

Dupree, you see, is something of a retro hippie throwback. He’s an intrusive, amiable mess who can’t keep a job, even at 40, and who thus moves in with Carl and Molly, immediately turning the shaky first days of their marriage into turmoil.

The movie seems like a natural extension of Wilson’s last major hit, “The Wedding Crashers,” in which he played a character who crashed weddings. On the other side of the altar, where he crashes the Petersons’ marriage, things aren’t nearly as bright nor as funny. The trouble with “Dupree” goes beyond its idiot plot. For it to succeed, Wilson needed to bring a groundswell of charm to the role. If he didn’t (and he doesn’t – all he brings is his usual bag of tricks), then how are we to believe that his character would be allowed to stay beneath Carl and Molly’s roof when, at one point, he literally almost burns down the house beneath it?

For any movie to succeed, the audience must first be able to suspend a certain level of belief. If the balance is tipped too far, it can be increasingly difficult to keep the blinders on and just go along with whatever unfolds.

This is especially true for “Dupree,” which in spite of a few modest laughs and a nicely oily performance by Michael Douglas as Molly’s wealthy, meddling father, collapses from the start into a broad, overly familiar gimmick.

Grade: C-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

The Adventures of Superman: Fifth and Sixth Seasons – B

Akeelah and the Bee – B+

American Dreamz – D-

ATL – B-

Basic Instinct 2 – D+

The Benchwarmers – D

Big Momma’s House 2 – D

Breakfast on Pluto – B

The Break-Up – B

Brokeback Mountain – A-

Broken Trail – B

Capote – A

Cars – C

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 – C-

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – A

Click – C-

The Constant Gardener – A-

Curious George – B

Date Movie – D-

The Da Vinci Code – C+

Derailed – C+

Double Indemnity – A

Failure to Launch – C-

The Family Stone – D

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – B

Freedomland – C-

Friends with Money – B

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties – C+

The Green Mile: Special Edition – A

The Hills Have Eyes – D

A History of Violence – A

How Art Made the World – A

Howl’s Moving Castle – A-

Inside Man – B+

Junebug – A

King Kong on HD DVD – C

Kinky Boots – B+

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – B+

Last Holiday – B

The Last Samurai on Blu-Ray – C

The Libertine – D

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Fourth Season – C+

Lucky Number Slevin – B

The Matador – B+

Match Point – A

Mission Impossible III – C-

Monster House – B+

Munich – A-

Nacho Libre – C

North Country – C

The Omen – B-

Over the Hedge – B

Paradise Now – A-

The Phantom of the Opera on Blu-ray – C

Poseidon – B

A Prairie Home Companion – C

Red Eye – B+

Rumor Has It … – C-

Saving Shiloh – B

Scary Movie 4 – D+

The Shaggy Dog – C-

Shakespeare Behind Bars – A-

Six Feet Under: Complete Series – A-

16 Blocks – B

The Squid and the Whale – B+

Slither – B

Stay Alive – D-

Take the Lead – C-

Transamerica – B

United 93 – A

V for Vendetta – B+

The West Wing: Complete Seventh Season – B

X-Men: The Last Stand – B-

You, Me and Dupree – C-