Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: The Fate of Broadway, The State of Liza
Next story: Slumdog Millionaire

Seven Pounds

Man on a Mission

His IRS identification says his name is Ben Thomas, which is also the first on the list of seven names he carries with him on his rounds. He claims to be doing the standard business of an IRS agent, investigating people with tax problems, but it doesn’t take long for us to realize that he has other interests than whether the people on his list claimed any unallowed deductions. But what is he up to?

Will Smith and Rosario Dawson in Seven Pounds

Well, he’s played by Will Smith, so despite an opening scene in which he is rude to a telephone customer service agent, we figure he’s probably a nice guy. That wouldn’t be a handicap in real life, but it could be one for Smith’s career: It was fun watching him trying to play a miserable prick in the summer hit Hancock, but you never for a moment took him seriously at it.

And after a few more minutes of Seven Pounds, we learn that he is indeed on some kind of mission to help people. But what is that nature of that help? And why is he compelled to provide it? Is he a supernatural agent?

(I was reminded at times of two of my favorite movies, Wings of Desire, with Bruno Ganz as an angel who walks among mankind listening in to our thoughts, and The Bishop’s Wife, with Cary Grant as an angel sent to guide troubled priest David Niven and his wife Loretta Young. If you have digital cable you can catch that one this week on TCM’s OnDemand service, and a better Christmas movie you’d be hard pressed to find.)

What soon becomes clear is that this is one of those movies that is going to take its time letting you know what it’s up to. In fact, the shape of the story never becomes fully clear until the ending.

Which was fine with me. Too many movies work from such established templates that the whole thing is pretty much clear to viewers within the first 10 minutes. Directed with complete control of his material by the Italian filmmaker Gabriele Muccino, who previously collaborated with Smith on the more straightforward The Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds involves us with Thomas and his quest slowly but surely.

As such, it is a movie to get lost in, and it would be a disservice on my part to give away too much of it when so much of the pleasure I had in watching this movie came from not knowing quite where it was going. Looking at it in retrospect, I’m not entirely sure that Muccino and debuting writer Grant Nieporte aren’t guilty of some misdirection. All of the sevens in the movie, from the title to Smith’s voiceover observation that “In seven days, God created the world. In seven seconds, I shattered mine” are merely distracting window dressing that make the film sound more schematic than it is. (I’m pretty sure we never actually see all of the people on his list.)

The story comes to center on Thomas’s investigation of Emily Posa (a lovely Rosario Dawson), whom he first finds in a hospital. The nature of her illness causes her to hold him at a distance. Later, as she becomes attracted to him and the kindness she (and we) doesn’t quite understand, he tries to keep her at a distance. Falling in love is not part of his plan.

Here’s the thing about movie romances: they’re not about people being together, but rather about people drawing together. The weakest aspect of most romances is failing to make plausible impediments to the inevitable. We know the guy and the girl and going to end up together: the movie needs to give us some good reasons why they might not in order to get us involved.

There’s no question that Seven Pounds involves you. Muccino seduces you into the story’s mystery, despite a fractured narrative that isn’t as confusing as it may initially seem. To a point, this may become a favorite film of many who see it.

That point is the ending, which is both surprising and shocking. I think it will provoke many different reactions, and while I can understand how it is intended, it’s hard not to think of it as an expression of despair as much as of love. However you react to it, it’s not a gimmick; this is a more ambitious drama than most anything else you’re likely to see from a Hollywood studio this holiday season.



Trailer for Seven Pounds


Current Movie TimesFilm Now PlayingThis Week's Film ReviewsMovie Trailers on AVTV

blog comments powered by Disqus