Movies linking different stories taking place all over the world are usually are praised for the interweaving plot coming together with some big revelation. Think about Babel, universally praised for mixing intercontinental tragedy. I liked it moderately, as it was a bit too gloomy, and I would not put it in my top-ten list.
On the other hand, 360 working on a similar take, was vilified almost unanimously. On a different merry-go-round we have the stories of an English businessman ready to stray with a prostitute in Vienna, while his wife is already straying in London with a Brazilian guy, whose fiancée is dumping him for said infidelity and traveling back home, etc
Since the prostitute is having her photos taken by a photographer for her online advert, the movie starts and finishes with a girl entering the study, thus coming round 360 degrees. A couple of stories are quite weak, such as the Brazilian girl meeting a sex offender en route to Brazil and the prostitute's sister running away with a stranger. However, compared to Babel what is missing here is mega tragedy and that is exactly what made Babel so pretentious, with its existentialist grandeur.
Therefore, I liked 360 better because its characters are more "normal" – except, perhaps, the Russian mobsters – and their lives are not experiencing huge calamities. They just change or adjust slightly. I guess that was not liked by the critics (and public). Nowadays, a level of extra-drama seems to be required in ever massive doses to relieve with excitement our numbed existences
at least for a couple of hours.
