Seven Pounds sees two-time Academy Award nominated actor Will Smith team up once again with Director Gabriele Muccino who first collaborated for 2007’s heart-wrenching drama A Pursuit of Happyness.
Seven Pounds surrounds Tim Thomas (Will Smith) who blames himself for the death of his fiancée and six other people following a car accident caused by his negligence. The film picks up two years later where Tim is searching for suitable candidates who deserve his help in atonement for the lives he ruined two years earlier. Tim has already donated a lung lobe to his brother Ben, part of his liver to child services worker Holly, a kidney to Hockey coach George and continues to donate bone marrow to a little boy named Nicholas.
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Drowning in guilt Tim assumes his brother’s identity as an Internal Revenue Services Agent and seeks for another candidate to help while calling upon Holly to also find him a family who needs his help. Tim meanwhile befriends a blind man named Ezra (Woody Harrelson) who he first verbally assaults in order to find out if he’s quick to anger and if he deserves Tim’s help. Ultimately Tim battles through his overwhelming sense of self-loathing to fall in love with heart patient Emily (Rosario Dawson) who is given but a few weeks to live.
I was looking forward to this film particularly because of Muccino’s great work with his previous movies and also because of the great reviews I received from people who’d seen it before me. The film began with a great intensity which it did carry out throughout its course and a dark cloud of impending doom hovered over each shot especially because the film decided to reveal its ending in the first scene.
Will Smith and Rosario Dawson work beautifully together as the primary figures in the film while Harrelson’s cameo of sorts was in no way memorable but it did exactly what it needed to. However, Smith’s character on whom the entire film rests upon seemed detached from the audience because of the inexplicably self-righteous run he goes on before his genuine self-hatred catches up to him. He’s character is not relevant nor is he consistent whereas the film somehow dupes the audience into thinking of him as a righteous hero who makes painful sacrifices to help others after stalking them to find if they ‘deserve’ his help, in an attempt to right the wrongs he did two years back. Apart from the film’s message it lacked a truly gripping story.
It was an unlikely love story dealing some heavy blows in the way of heart breaks and self-pitying stories but nothing you would really want to go out and see in particular.
The film tries to make a statement and many who watched it thought it did until they themselves pondered on its content. The film sacrifices far too much morally to play at the sentiment it wanted so desperately to tap into that ultimately for me the story seemed an insult to my intelligence.
The morbid sense of sacrifice and lofty morality it tried to convey seemed to have lulled a few members of the audience into appreciating its message but under its crust the film was unduly self-important with not one memorable moment or idea in it. Finally for those who’d like to keep there sanity and morals in their front pockets leave this film well alone unless a good laugh is on the cards. |
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