Seven Pounds

Seven Pounds
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gabriele Muccino
Written by	Grant Nieporte
Produced by	Todd Black Jason Blumenthal James Lassiter Will Smith Steve Tisch
Starring	Will Smith Rosario Dawson Woody Harrelson Michael Ealy Barry Pepper
Cinematography	Philippe Le Sourd
Edited by	Hughes Winborne
Music by	Angelo Milli
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	December 19, 2008
Running time	123 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$55,000,000
Box office	$16,000,000

Seven Pounds is a drama film directed by Gabriele Muccino. Will Smith stars as a man who will change the lives of seven strangers. Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, and Barry Pepper also star. The film was released in theaters on December 19, 2008. It has received mainly negative reviews from film critics.

Plot

The movie starts out with the main character, Ben Thomas (Will Smith), making a 911 call to report a suicide. When dispatch asks the identity of the victim, Ben responds, "I am."

Early in the story, Ben is shown on the phone trying to start a fight with a blind telemarketer and pianist named Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson). Despite attempts by Ben to infuriate him, Ezra does not fight back while taking some of Ben's stinging abuse and then hangs up the phone. Ben then recites the names of seven people from a list that was shown before his call to Ezra.

The movie then flashes back to the start of Ben's journey. He is an IRS agent who uses his position of power to get close to people and learn more about them. First, he meets Stewart Goodman (Tim Kelleher), a man who needs a bone marrow transplant. Goodman runs a nursing home, and upon his trip there, Ben realizes that Goodman is very cruel to his patients. He forced an old lady to take a drug against her will, and punished her by not letting her take a bath or shower. Ben angrily confronts Goodman about this and storms out. Goodman thinks all he is losing is time to pay his medical bills.

Ben then visits his friend Holly and with her help, he finds Connie, who is being abused by her boyfriend. He tells her he can drastically change her and her children's lives, but she refuses his help. Ben seeks out another friend of his, to whom he apparently donates blood.

Ben also seeks out Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), a woman whose heart is failing. He finds Emily at the hospital and follows her to her room. He observes her and another young patient named Nicholas, who also needs a bone marrow transplant. After Emily confronts Ben, he tells her he is from the IRS and that she hasn't paid her taxes because of her mounting medical bills. With time, Emily and Ben become lovers. Ben asks the hospital staff about her survival chances and is told that, given her blood type, Emily only has a 3-5% chance of finding a matching donor.

One rainy night, Ben is confronted by his brother, who is actually the real Ben Thomas. Will Smith's character's name is really Tim. Tim stole his brother's identification in order to use the IRS badge to find the people he's been looking for. After learning Emily's prognosis, he goes back to his apartment and makes the very same 911 call seen at the beginning of the movie. He fills the tub with ice water, climbs in and then drops in a box jellyfish. As the jellyfish stings him, the events in his life that prompted his suicide are shown. While riding in a car with his fiancée, he gets an email/text from work. While looking at his cell phone, he drifts into another lane and into oncoming traffic. The ensuing wreck kills his fiancée, as well as six other people who were riding in the bus his car hit. Because of Tim, seven people died. This is the list that Tim was reciting after his heated conversation with Ezra. There are also constant flashes to newspaper clippings he's collected of these seven innocent lives.

With the reason for Tim's suicide explained, the paramedics arrive and take him to the hospital, where he dies. Emily receives his heart via a transplant. This is the reason why he fills his tub with ice water; in order to properly preserve his heart after his death.

At the end of the movie, it is revealed that Tim's brother, the real Ben Thomas, also needed a double lung transplant and that's what got 'Ben' started in donating his organs. He also donated part of his liver to an ailing woman, Holly, who is shown earlier in the movie. Emily cries hearing this news. She decides to seek out Ezra. When she finds Ezra, he is playing the piano at a big event with a children's choir performing behind him. He is no longer blind. Ben gave him his eyes. Gone are Ezra's blank blue eyes; now he has 'Ben's dark brown eyes. Ezra realizes who Emily is and as tears roll down her face, they embrace and the movie ends.

Tim Thomas had decided long ago to commit suicide and decided to donate his organs, but only to 'good' people who were deserving of such a gift. Hence, Tim tempted Ezra to get angry and discovered he was a good man. Tim refuses to help and did not donate his bone marrow to the caretaker Stewart Goodman, because he was a 'bad' man.

The seven people Tim helps are Emily Posa (to whom he gives his heart), Ezra Turner (to whom he gives his eyes), Ben Thomas (to whom he gives his lung), Holly (to whom he gives his liver), Connie (to whom he gives his house), Nicholas (to whom he donates bone marrow) and George (to whom he donates a kidney to in order to get off dialysis). Hence the title of the movie is finally revealed: 'Ben' Thomas donates seven pounds of flesh in order to seek redemption for the seven innocent lives he took that rainy night.

Production

Seven Pounds is based on a script written by Grant Nieporte under Columbia Pictures. In June 2006, actor Will Smith joined the studio to star in the planned film and to serve as one of its producers. In September 2007, director Gabriele Muccino, who worked with Smith on The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), was attached to direct Seven Pounds, bringing along his creative team from the 2006 film. Smith was joined by Rosario Dawson and Woody Harrelson the following December to star in Seven Pounds. Filming began in February 2008.

Cast

Will Smith stars as Ben Thomas, a suicidal IRS agent. Smith described the reason he took on the role:

Usually with the films that I make there are ideas that I connect to, but lately I've been dealing with the bittersweet in life because it feels more natural. You don't ever get it really the way you want in life. That really fascinates me. As an actor, there are certain parts of a character that you create, and you train yourself to have those reactions and then it becomes hard to stop them when the role is over. You have to retrain yourself. My character in this film is like hot grits. You know you can't shake them off and when you do, it hurts.

Smith felt that the character needed to be a quiet and rather introverted person who doesn't burn out oneself at every possible instance. The character was a contrast to Smith's previous characters, and Smith felt that director Gabriele Muccino's trust in him helped him relax and avoid overextending himself. Smith acknowledged Seven Pounds as a drama film, but he saw it as more of a love story.

Also in the film are Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Barry Pepper, and Michael Ealy. Will Smith handpicked Ealy for the role of the main character's young brother. Connor Cruise, the 13-year-old adopted son of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was cast in his first role as a younger version of Tim Thomas.

Release

Prior to the film's release, the title Seven Pounds was considered a "mystery" which the studio refused to explain. Early trailers for Seven Pounds also kept the film's details a mystery. Director Gabriele Muccino explained the intent, "The [audience] will not know exactly what this man is up to."

Seven Pounds was promoted on a five-city tour across the United States in November 2008, screening in Cleveland, Miami, Dallas, St. Louis, and Denver to raise funds for food banks in each region. The film was also promoted at a charity screening in Minneapolis in support of Second Harvest Heartland. Since screenings of new films usually took place in Los Angeles or New York City, the choice of cities was unconventional. Smith said, "This is more like the old-school music tours. Different clubs, different cities, meeting people. You get in touch with what people are feeling and thinking, and it's much more personal when you're actually out shaking hands." The actor sought to "get reacquainted" with an America that he felt had an "openness to change" with the country's election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president. The film had its theatrical release on December 19, 2008.

Critical reception

Critics have given the film generally negative reviews. The movie website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 29% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based upon a sample of 115, with an average score of 4.7/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 36 based on 31 reviews.

Variety's film reviewer Todd McCarthy predicted that the movie's climax "will be emotionally devastating for many viewers, perhaps particularly those with serious religious beliefs," but characterized the film as an "endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head." Other established reviewers were more unequivocally critical; A. O. Scott, writing for The New York Times, said that the movie "... may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made."

Box Office

The film opened #2 behind Yes Manwith $16 million in 2,758 theaters with an $5,801 average

External links

• Official website and trailer
• Seven Pounds at IMDb
• Seven Pounds at AllMovie