David O'ConnellSeven Pounds
February 6th 2009 03:38
Italian director Gabrielle Muccino’s association with Will Smith has certainly been a commercially successful one for him. Enticed to Hollywood two years ago to make The Pursuit of Happyness, he now follows it with another morality tale, Seven Pounds, a mysterious film at first which hooks the audience with an intriguing and very elongated set-up before its master plan is revealed.
Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS tax collector who seems in a depressed, fragile state emotionally, living by himself and visiting a host of people, some of whom appear to be unrelated to his work. The dialogue he engages in with these people hints at darker meanings and intentions which, deprived of their complete back-stories for now, we have no way of fully comprehending.
There’s a brother (Michael Ealy) he’s deliberately avoiding, as well as a best friend, Dan (Barry Pepper), who’s waiting to be called into action to perform a task on Ben’s behalf at some future point – a course of action he’s obviously dreading.
What could Ben’s plan possibly involve? There’s a compelling arc to this story for the first 40 minutes or so before frustration demands that we be allowed to break through the inpenetrable wall and get to the point!
Slowly the overall picture does begin to take shape with more details slowly coming to light and it’s at this point that Ben’s emotional entanglement with one of so-called ‘clients’, the beautiful Emily (Rosario Dawson), becomes more serious. A young woman dying of a rare heart condition unless a suitable donor is found, Emily seems able to erase the troubled thoughts plaguing Ben when they’re together by distracting him with a glimpse at a life he obviously hasn’t imagined in recent times.
Without doubt Seven Pounds packs an emotional wallop and the forceful performance of Will Smith - possibly his best ever - is a crucial factor in sustaining our interest. An actor used to projecting a larger-than-life presence which overwhelms any sense of realistic characterization at times, Smith shows admirable restraint as Ben; in fact, it’s an amazingly affecting and nuanced performance.
Though there are undoubtedly huge question marks over the credibility of the film's conclusion in so many respects, the creative license taken with the truth by screenwriter Grant Nieporte will be overlooked or forgiven by the more lenient audience members amongst us who want to believe in the possibility of this outcome! I won’t exclude myself from that category to some degree either; it’s hard to avoid being swept along by the conviction of Smith’s character and the emotional devastation wrought by knowing the full extent of his plans and the painful truth behind them.
Seven Pounds raises some interesting moral questions and though it quashes most of them with the iron fist of implausibility - a sanitized Hollywood version of telling an unusual story in an appropriate and blatantly manipulative way – it still earns marks for showing another, more complex side of Will Smith's talents.
Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS tax collector who seems in a depressed, fragile state emotionally, living by himself and visiting a host of people, some of whom appear to be unrelated to his work. The dialogue he engages in with these people hints at darker meanings and intentions which, deprived of their complete back-stories for now, we have no way of fully comprehending.
Ben (Will Smith) with Emily (Rosario Dawson)
There’s a brother (Michael Ealy) he’s deliberately avoiding, as well as a best friend, Dan (Barry Pepper), who’s waiting to be called into action to perform a task on Ben’s behalf at some future point – a course of action he’s obviously dreading.
What could Ben’s plan possibly involve? There’s a compelling arc to this story for the first 40 minutes or so before frustration demands that we be allowed to break through the inpenetrable wall and get to the point!
Slowly the overall picture does begin to take shape with more details slowly coming to light and it’s at this point that Ben’s emotional entanglement with one of so-called ‘clients’, the beautiful Emily (Rosario Dawson), becomes more serious. A young woman dying of a rare heart condition unless a suitable donor is found, Emily seems able to erase the troubled thoughts plaguing Ben when they’re together by distracting him with a glimpse at a life he obviously hasn’t imagined in recent times.
Martyrdom requires profound pondering with nature close at hand!!
Without doubt Seven Pounds packs an emotional wallop and the forceful performance of Will Smith - possibly his best ever - is a crucial factor in sustaining our interest. An actor used to projecting a larger-than-life presence which overwhelms any sense of realistic characterization at times, Smith shows admirable restraint as Ben; in fact, it’s an amazingly affecting and nuanced performance.
Though there are undoubtedly huge question marks over the credibility of the film's conclusion in so many respects, the creative license taken with the truth by screenwriter Grant Nieporte will be overlooked or forgiven by the more lenient audience members amongst us who want to believe in the possibility of this outcome! I won’t exclude myself from that category to some degree either; it’s hard to avoid being swept along by the conviction of Smith’s character and the emotional devastation wrought by knowing the full extent of his plans and the painful truth behind them.
Seven Pounds raises some interesting moral questions and though it quashes most of them with the iron fist of implausibility - a sanitized Hollywood version of telling an unusual story in an appropriate and blatantly manipulative way – it still earns marks for showing another, more complex side of Will Smith's talents.
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