Sunday’s Movie Tip: Seven Pounds

If you have not seen Will Smith’s movie, Seven Pounds, I can truly recommend it as a great movie to enjoy on a Sunday evening. If you watch it, I can promise you that it will be easy to embrace tomorrow, even if it’s Monday.

You either rent it or use Amazon’s Video on Demand, if you have access to that. You can also order it and place it in your shelf, on either DVD or Blu-ray, as well.

Here is my review of Seven Pounds:

In Seven Pounds, we get to see Will Smith play the depressed, but highly friendly, IRS agent Ben Thomas. We follow him, as he in a mysteriously way, approach strangers and offers them great gifts, that will truly turn their life’s around, to the better.

The plot evolves slowly, sometimes too slow for my taste, and piece by piece we get to know who Ben Thomas is and that the cause to his depression, is that his wife died in a car accident.

Soon there’s revealed to us, that Ben has a plan, for something, and that the only person that is in on it, is his childhood friend, played by Barry Pepper. However, as Ben is in the middle of his redemption tour, he meets Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), a woman with a serious heart failure and falls in love.

This is something that Ben did not expect to happen and after their roads cross, their relationship becomes the core of the story, throughout the rest of the movie.

You will understand Ben’s earlier life from his flashbacks, which works well and gives life to the ground story. Nevertheless, I think that the story has some disturbing holes here and there, which it never fills. Take Woody Harrelson’s character, a blind pianist called Ezra Turner, as an example.

You get the impression that Ezra plays a key role in the story, however when the movie ended, Ezra was a complete mystery, at least for me. This is a destiny shared by other characters in Seven Pounds, which leaves an aftertaste filled with questions, instead of anything else.

I think that the movie could have been better, if the big focus on Ben and Emily, had been shared with more characters. Then it had not felt like an aimless drawing, from time to time. I would have loved to see more of Woody Harrelson’s Ezra, as I think that Harrelson played him very well, the little I saw of him.

As for Will Smith, he is great when it comes to comedy and action, but when it comes to drama; I think that he just barely managed to get it through. His dramatically registry lacks of experience, which partly shines through in, Seven Pounds. He does not deliver Ben with enough substantial quality, to make the character believable.

I think that the role was slightly too big for him and not even Gabriele Muccino could guide him through the role completely, as he did in The Pursuit of Happyness.  Nevertheless, Will Smith does his job and he does it good though, but he does not deliver that little extra.

The other actors delivers great performances overall. Especially noticeable is Rosario Dawson, in her role of Emily, which she does very well, throughout the whole movie. She manages to capture the frustration and the hopelessness of her characters deadly situation, in a way that I can believe, In opposition to Will Smith’s performance.

Woody Harrelson’s blind pianist Ezra Turner, is also enjoyable to watch. There is especially one scene, where Ben Thomas gives Ezra a hard time over the phone, which I think Woody does really well. It is just too bad that we do not get to know Ezra a bit more, though.

Now, Seven pounds is a good movie, no doubt about that. It has a superb photo and all the actors deliver. Nevertheless, Seven Pounds gives us just a brief overview of all the events, that is going on and then it is up to us, to fill in the blanks, as good as, we can.

In addition, it is too obvious to predict that Ben has a secret agenda, stashed away in his back pocket, besides his master plan. The movie tries to hide the clues, to what is going to happen.

Sadly, it behaves like someone who cannot keep a secret, leaking all over the place, without saying it aloud. Since the movie contains one of the strongest ends, I have seen in a while, it is too bad that it could not keep its mouth shout!

Now, it is not as bad as it sounds, but I think that the writers could have done a better job keeping the suspense and the mystery around Ben, to last just a little bit longer. That way the final chapter in Seven Pounds could have been classical one.

My Rating of Seven Pounds:

Photo credit: © Columbia Pictures