Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
12/21/08
****SPOILER ALERT****
IF YOU PREFER TO REMAIN UNSPOILED, PROBABLY BETTER NOT TO READ EVEN A SINGLE
WORD OF THIS REVIEW, BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO WORK HARD ENOUGH NOT
TO FIGURE OUT SEVEN POUNDS' SECRETS WHILE YOU'RE WATCHING IT*****
“If you don't think your life is worth
more than someone else's, then sign your donor card and kill yourself.”-Dr.
Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), House, M.D.
Things I hate:
-Movies opening with a random
moment from near the end that spoils all their secrets in a futile attempt
to “start with a bang”
-Stories where a character
or characters set out to do something and ultimately do it after encountering
few or no obstacles
-Twist Movies where the
twist is obvious within 20 minutes
-Movies that expect me to
be grateful to have had unearned tragedy heaped upon me because “it's so
sad”.
For all of the above, see
Seven Pounds, a pointless, depressing love letter to suicide masquerading
as an uplifting tale of loss and redemption. Will Smith is outstanding
in an extremely challenging role, leading a first-rate cast that labors
futilely under the steady direction of Pursuit
of Happyness' Gabriele Muccino to sell a story as obvious as it is
wrongheaded. Seven Pounds looks and feels like a quality Oscar
season release, but I honestly can't think of one good reason to tell this
story.
Ben Thomas (Will Smith) is
an IRS agent “auditing” a series of people who happen to be sick.
He makes a spectacularly belligerent call to the 800 line manned by blind
Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson), speaks to the nursing home patients of kidney
diseased Stewart Goodman (Tim Kelleher), and shows up at the hospital to
demand payment from weak-hearted Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson). Relentlessly
despairing whenever he's not putting on a show for these people, we see
Ben blow off the calls of his frightened brother (Michael Ealy), be traumatized
by flashbacks of a happy past and meet with childhood friend Dan (Barry
Pepper) to demand that he follow through on an agreement they've made.
Just what is going on here?
I checked my watch at the
moment I figured it all out: 17 minutes had passed. But even
once I'd done so, Seven Pounds is interesting enough to get by:
Smith's barely functional character is a compelling figure, and Dawson,
Harrelson and Pepper are all outstanding. The movie even develops
some narrative drive once Ben starts to fall for Emily and we think he
might not follow through with his plan. Their romance is the best
thing about the story: there's solid chemistry between these two
wounded people and for a few brief, shining moments we get to think the
plot might be headed somewhere other than the obvious.
If only that were true.
By slicing and dicing itself into one of those fashionable puzzle box narratives,
Seven Pounds is all in on the revelation of Ben's obvious plan being
the entire point of the exercise, but I can't help but think that the reveal
will be even more dispiriting to people who DON'T see it coming.
But honestly, how can you not unless you spend the entire movie texting
(not something it would recommend, by the way...)? What other possible
reason could Ben have to keep carrying around a Box Jellyfish he tells
us is the most poisonous creature in the world? How many times does
he have to allude to his own death? Flash back to a horrible accident?
Show us a newspaper clipping about seven people being killed? Most
people won't need more than one of these clues in conjunction with the
scene Muccino and Nieporte choose to start with, a really fatal example
of giving away too much too soon. The script contains only one true
surprise (the answer to the question of what Ben's brother keeps calling
about), and even it doesn't really make any difference.
As I've mentioned, the movie
is skillfully made, with Muccino setting a good, quietly ominous mood (aided
by Angelo Milli's strong, subtle score) and getting really great performances.
It's funny how rough the last couple years at the movies have been for
the famously gregarious Smith, once again playing a man consumed with despair
and doing so brilliantly. Dawson's quiet, sad performance fits his
like a puzzle piece: she's probably never been better. Woody
Harrelson just keeps becoming more and more skilled as he grows older:
Ezra's only in four scenes, but he absolutely glows in each. And
Pepper takes a ludicrous, absurd role and makes it work with a depth of
emotion that suggests all kinds of things the script never bothers to deliver.
Truth be told, the script
doesn't deliver very much at all. It's clear almost immediately what
Ben plans to do and why he plans to do it, but just about everything about
the story is left to be filled in by the viewer. I can go on all
day about missing pieces and conversations unhad, and I'm sure the movie's
defenders would tell me that all you have to do is read between the lines
and you'll know these things must have happened. But you could save
a lot of money by only filming half of any given script and we'd just know
that the rest of its' scenes must have happened. The point is to
SHOW US the relevant detail of the script. If you're gonna show us
the jellyfish that many times, can't I at least see somebody (and it would
have to be Dan) try to talk Ben out of what he plans to do?
*****SUPER-DOUBLE-SECRET
SPOILER WARNING: NO SECRETS WILL REMAIN PAST THESE CAPS***** And
that brings us to the biggest problem with Seven Pounds: it
expects us to approve of the suicide of a mentally disturbed person because
he signed his organ donor card. Is there a great movie to be made
about a man who can't get past his responsibility for the deaths of people
in an auto accident who kills himself with a mad plan to “make up for”
those deaths? Sure, you can make a great movie about anything.
But I can't imagine that movie not including a single dissenting voice,
and I can't imagine it finding the suicide to be as much of a positive
as that final scene between Emily and Ezra clearly does. Bottom line:
donating a few organs doesn't make Ben's suicide any less of a coward's
way out than anyone else's. Yes, he is responsible for the seven
people killed in the accident, and I can imagine him feeling a desperation
to make up for that by saving other people. But we see him save several
lives in the movie without killing himself through transplants that won't
kill him and a simple good deed. How many more lives could he have
saved if he had kept going? Simply needing to balance the scales
is an act of insanity. Why does Dan go along with it? Because
he's Ben's Best Friend? If so, he's the worst Best Friend ever.
It's called an Intervention, people. Look into it.
Ben's suicide-by-jellyfish
is ridiculous. I'm sure we can fill in the blank that he chose that
method because it would leave his organs intact, but isn't there some less
melodramatic way to off himself that would have accomplished the same goal?
And how could a decent man like Ezra live with himself knowing that a man
had committed suicide specifically so he would get his eyes? Pretty
well, judging by that wrap-up.
Seven Pounds officially
claims the title of Least Inspirational Inspirational Movie previously
held by Pay it Forward (although that WAS a worse movie in general).
It's easy to watch and always seems to be headed somewhere interesting,
until it simply drives straight off the cliff of its' own despair.
And then looks on approvingly. |
