Will Smith: Seven Pounds - 2008-12-18 6:24 PM
Will Smith: Suicide, Career and Otherwise
Geez. Don't hold back, Mr. Critic, tell us how you really feel.
I have no idea if this film is good or bad but the critic would have a lot more credibility if he didn't go on about how surprised he is that Will Smith would star in a "serious" movie. What about "I Am Legend," "The Pursuit of Happyness," "Ali," "the Legend of Bagger Vance" or "Six Degrees of Separation," none of which were laugh riots?
- "Seven Pounds," Will Smith’s holiday offering, is a relentlessly depressing, strange piece of cinema that really has no business being released at Christmas, if ever.
What you will see: a gaunt looking Smith, morose and ponderous, self righteous and self pitying, playing a man who’s planning his own suicide. That he carries it out at the end of the film is not so much of a surprise. (In the opening scene, he calls in his own suicide to 911.) It’s so graphic and elaborate all the scene is missing is a fat lady singing opera on the soundtrack.
The premise of "Seven Pounds" is that Smith’s character, Ben Thomas, has caused the deaths of seven people including his beloved wife in an auto accident. He can’t live with himself, so he plots a way to commit suicide and at the same time save the lives of seven strangers. This will be his redemption.
Among the seven strangers is a blind piano player, a young woman with a heart condition, an older woman who needs a liver transplant, and an abused woman and her children.
"Seven Pounds" weighs a lot more than the title would indicate, more like seven tons. In the audience you will hear weeping, and many hankies are pulled from sleeves and handbags as the multiple "surprise" endings and "twists" are revealed. Rarely has there been a more portentous movie — ominous melancholy music is as ceaseless as the movie is grim, and the look on Smith’s face never lets you forget it.
If the recession, Bernie Madoff, and two wars isn’t enough to depress you this Christmas, "Seven Pounds" should do the trick. Not since Jim Carrey nosedived in "The Cable Guy" have I seen a more misguided star vehicle. To be in a Will Smith movie and not have one laugh for 90 minutes, and then a rueful one of foreshadowing, is really jaw dropping.
You could call "Seven Pounds" a courageous move for Smith, a bold choice, a way to stretch. [But] "Seven Pounds" is just gruesome, a horrid misfire by a well intentioned actor who will definitely be able to bounce back. I hope.
Geez. Don't hold back, Mr. Critic, tell us how you really feel.
I have no idea if this film is good or bad but the critic would have a lot more credibility if he didn't go on about how surprised he is that Will Smith would star in a "serious" movie. What about "I Am Legend," "The Pursuit of Happyness," "Ali," "the Legend of Bagger Vance" or "Six Degrees of Separation," none of which were laugh riots?
