Seven Pounds (2008)

I’ve never seen such a bad film so well made. Seven Pounds tries to trick you into thinking you just saw a powerful work of art. It wants you to weep, and grab onto someone you love, and exclaim outside the cinema how “it’s the best movie since Crash!” I've got to admit, for a moment, it almost had me. But Seven Pounds doesn’t deserve the affection it so badly craves. It’s manipulative, tedious, patronising and shallow, but director Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) knows how to make it look pretty. Italian charm aside, that’s not enough.

Will Smith stars as Ben Thomas, an IRS agent with a pet jellyfish (a plot point that is, sadly, quite significant). Ben has a very mysterious mission that is so mysterious he wouldn’t dare share his mysterious mystery with anyone. Mysterious, huh? Muccino must imagine his audience turning to each other throughout the film and asking “Oh my, what could this guy possibly be planning?” The problem is, however, this ‘mysterious plan’ is so glaringly obvious, that even Woody Harrellson’s blind piano player can see right through it.

Oh sorry. Had I not already mentioned that Harrelson was in this film? I guess I’m no better than the screenplay; randomly introducing elements whenever it serves the plot, and sometimes not even then. The problem with Seven Pounds is that it hinges completely on a last minute reveal that is neither unexpected nor interesting. Other films have survived unspectacular dénouement’s, but Seven Pounds has nothing BUT conclusion. Ben Thomas has a clear mission in mind, and he won’t be swayed.

Smith is working hard. Too hard in fact. His character is drowning in guilt and Smith wants you to know it. He’s so determined for us to see Ben as a pious martyr, that he may as well have climbed onto the cross himself and shouted for someone to pass him the nails and hammer. Thank God Smith is as likable as he is, or Ben Thomas could have been one of the most awful, self-righteous characters in film history. In fact, if he and Rosario Dawson didn’t have any chemistry the film would have almost nothing going for it.

Oh right, Rosario Dawson is in this too. Surprise! I suppose I better get back to the story in case I give away too much too early! Harrelson stars as Ezra, a blind call center operator by day and a blind piano player by night (because all Blind People play the piano in these films). Ben calls Ezra at work and begins to mock his disability, for no apparent reason. Or maybe that’s part of the mystery. Later on Ben visits a woman called Emily (Dawson) who hasn’t been paying her hospital bills. She has a weak heart. Of course, he falls in love with her.

On and on and on it goes. There are flashbacks to another time in Ben’s life, when he had a better job and a wife. In the present, he visits various needy people and evaluates whether or not they are naughty or nice, like some sort of creepy Santa. On and on until its inevitable, inexplicable end. And it is an inexplicable end. The entire final 20 minutes is committee-approved schmaltz, including all the elements required to bring its audience to tears, such as children singing, suicide, surgery and a jellyfish. I told you the jellyfish would be important. Seven Pounds commits the two greatest sins in cinema: 1) it talks down to its audience and 2) it’s boring as hell. Ben Thomas is atoning for something – could it be for the film itself?

1.5/5

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