There’s no doubt that Will Smith has impressive range as an actor. His emotional performance in The Pursuit of Happyness is one to be remembered, and I suppose he was hoping to capture lightning twice with last year’s Seven Pounds
The film is a very weighty drama, in which Smith plays Ben Thomas, a broken man seeking redemption for a past mistake. The ideas explored in the film (redemption, goodness, selflessness, sacrifice) are all valid and the story does a good job of promoting all that is good with humankind. However, the biggest failure with Seven Pounds is that it gives away too much too soon, and it’s attempt at a foreceful one-two emotional punch falls flat.
The ending is given away at the onset of the film and then quickly we are rushed back to the beginning to see all the events in chronologcal order. The hope is that viewers will sit on the edge of their seats, waiting to see why Smith’s character made that phone call in the first scene. However, because of what we know in that opening moment, Ben Thomas’ ultimate plan is known a little less than half-way through the movie. We are left to watch as Ben goes around meeting a host of characters upon whom he can impart his goodness, in an ongoing effort to ease his own guilt.
Seven Pounds is certainly an emotional film, but one that lacks any serious impact.
4 out of 10
As the person who recommended this film to you, I’m amazed that you are so hard on it. I admit that the opening scene is a small giveaway as to what Ben Thomas is up to, but that’s a familiar vehicle, from “Lost” to your own short film. From this clue of events to come, you start seeing how he got to that moment and, the journey he went through is revealed in small increments and the beautiful Rosario Dawson gives him the permission to carry out his final act. This film is not about the suicide, it’s about what a man could propel himself to do when he’s filled with guilt and/or grief. It’s a different kind of man he is portraying than “The Pursuit of Happyness”. It’s another kind of desperate with this film, and I think he did a great job shifting gears from a fast-paced film like “Pursuit” to the deliberate pace of this film.
I would at least give it a 7 out of 10.