Seven Pounds
Review
by Sean Lynch
Someone
suggested recently that the overnight rise of Barack Obama's political
success - and more importantly - his acceptance amongst the general
public was thanks in large part to Will Smith.
Bear
in mind this is a general public who, let's face it, up until this
point in time laughed at the thought of a President who wasn't a crazy
religious white guy.
Perhaps it was a case of the planets
aligning, perhaps it was just a coincidence, perhaps the world just
finally felt a wave of "not being total inbred racists"...
But when Will Smith started taking the Box Office by storm with the likes of Hitch, Pursuit of Happyness and I Am Legend - the perception that all African Americans were "just like Chris Tucker" disappeared.
Smith delivered to the masses a confident, handsome, charming and intelligent guy who you would happily follow into battle.
Yep,
it seems the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air did for the African American
community in the space of five years what Al Sharpten couldn't do in
over twenty.
Seriously - who saw that coming?
But confidence can often blur into over-confidence, which seems to be the case with Smith's latest in Seven Pounds.
It's a film so sure of itself, the marketing team dared not bother even explain what the film is about.
Hell, the poster is just a giant shot of Smith's head - and the title is not only on the same line but the same size as his name!
What we do know about Seven Pounds is this:
Will Smith reunites with the directors and producers of The Pursuit of Happyness
for the emotional drama in which Smith plays Ben Thomas (an IRS agent
with a fateful secret) who embarks on an extraordinary journey of
redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.
Oh yeah, and we discover he commits suicide less than thirty seconds into proceedings...
The problem here is that while Seven Pounds
tries to be tricky (we're supposedly not meant to understand the whole
shebang until the final five minutes) it's about at transparent and
predictable as the jellyfish that serves as the films animal mascot.
That said there is something undeniably gripping about Seven Pounds
and it's all thanks to the two most charismatic actors currently
peddling their wares on the silver screen : Will Smith and Rosario
Dawson.
We all know how Smith oozes the charm, but Dawson has really gone under the radar for quite a while.
For the five people that actually saw Clerks II, you'll know exactly what sort of performance Dawson is capable of - but it's in Seven Pounds that she well and truly stamps her unbelievable screen presence.
Seven Pounds is ultimately a film which doesn't quite pull at the heart strings as much as Happyness
or as much as it would have actually liked to, as well as throwing up
more than a few controversial "water cooler" conversational questions
(such as: is this film's moral message "totally whack yo" and "does a
charming super brain have the capacity to do more good alive than
dead?").
A fairly solid effort, if not slightly preachy and misguided. Let's just hope that Obama doesn't follow suit...
3 out
of 5
Seven Pounds
Australian release: 8th January,
2009
Official
Site: Seven Pounds
Cast: Will Smith, Barry Pepper, Woody Harrelson, Rosario Dawson, Bill Smitrovich, Sarah Jane
Director: Gabrielle Muccino
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