“Usually with the films that I make there are ideas that I connect to, but lately I’ve been dealing with the bittersweet in life because it feels more natural,” star Will Smith told Newsweek when asked why he would “take on a character like that” in a movie that “is pretty haunting.” Smith continued, “You don’t ever get it really the way you want in life.
Philanthropically wishing to help others as he makes his exit, he arranges for his vital organs to be transplanted into “worthy” people. His decision is made out of both guilt and grief-his wife (presumably) died during a car accident he carelessly caused. So the only way I can conceive of dealing with the worldview presented is to be bluntly concise: This is a movie about a man who decides that life is not worth living anymore. To tiptoe softly around the issues raised by Seven Pounds would be to spend eight or 10 pages trying to explain things. He really does want to do something about that. Ben falls for Emily in the process of auditing her, and he starts to think more and more about her heart-the one she has and the one she needs. And a kidney.Īnd now we’re back to Emily, a woman who has a malfunctioning heart. Gifts that involve him seeking out the sick and infirm, then arranging for certain of his organs to be made available to them as a transplant. (She’s quite a bit cuter than Stewart, and she doesn’t manipulate and harangue the elderly in the nursing home Stewart runs.) So by the power not exactly vested in Ben by the Internal Revenue Service, he grants reprieves and “changes the circumstances”-one way or another-of pretty much everyone he meets.īut Ben doesn’t stop at financial rewards for good behavior.
He demands to know if they are “good” enough to deserve preferential treatment from the official tax collection agency of the U.S.A. He pokes around people’s backyards-and hospital rooms-without invitations. He asks probing, personal questions no IRS agent has any business asking. Ben goes door to door-and hospital to hospital-auditing people at the oddest times and in the oddest ways.
Will Smith plays an IRS agent named Ben Thomas. So consider this a significant spoiler warning. It’s not what you’d call any good, but Claude Lelouch fans, say, might relish its grandiose romantic gestures in the face of all known logic.There’s almost nothing I can say about Seven Pounds without it giving away almost everything about Seven Pounds. However, all concerned are mere pawns in thrall to a central conceit that sails beyond mere sentiment to encapsulate the surreal. Smith does enough here to suggest that he’s pushing at the edges of his goody-goody image, while Dawson works wonders in a role so thankless it should have its own awards category. Kudos though to director Gabriele Muccino (who previously helmed the rather grittier Smith entry ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’) for drip-feeding us towards the big reveal with no little style, turning out a movie that’s seductively lithe and sheeny, giving every impression of in-the-moment gravitas… rather like a superior car advert. What can it all mean?Īctually, the film’s distributors have us sworn to secrecy, but chances are that if we did spill the beans, you wouldn’t believe us. Still, a bit curious that Smith’s living in a cheap motel all the while, since intercut moments suggest a family life somewhere in the past. It’s then we meet mean Will Smith, an IRS agent seemingly specialising in pursuing the disadvantaged, such as Woody Harrelson’s blind piano teacher and Rosario Dawson’s stationery designer with a heart condition. Calling emergency services, he looks on his last legs, before we cut back to trace what brought him to this point of no return. It’s a distinctly frazzled Will Smith we see at the start of this teasing drama.