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Seven Pounds

Movie Grade: C+

DVD Features Grade: B

Overall Grade: B-

Director Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) has something of a muse in Will Smith. Seven Pounds is like the prodigal son to that last film. In the course of its two hour running time, it plays like a more controlled, more emotive, but less successful version of Muccino's breakout English-language drama.

It's an amiable premise: A debt collector for the I.R.S. decides that maybe, his own life is not entirely worth living, and takes it upon himself to help out a group of outsiders, strangers; he begins to follow them and charters, or maybe forges, emotional connections with these people in an effort to help them and help himself.

Will Smith plays Ben Thomas, that I.R.S. agent with a terrible secret that weighs down him in a manner suggesting a paranoid fixation with appeasing his own faults, and by taking a vested interest in the lives of others. To Muccino's credit, Seven Pounds moves quietly and with an air of mystery until its requisite ending, which parlays its overreaching concept into something more universal, and unfortunately, more saccharine and somewhat emotionally manipulative.

That means that the majority of this film is devoted to a being a collection of well-developed scenes highlighting the human condition. This air of mystery works in its favor as well; if we knew more about Ben Thomas, his work, why he feels the need to be a protagonist who estranges his own feelings and propels his infatuations and uncertainty into something more real, we might be as though we were being preached to. Seven Pounds never succumbs to that trite and morally subservient level of superficial emotion, like for example, Pay It Forward.

There's something uncertain about Smith's character, and Ben is, for a while at least "” and with a checkered past "” mysterious and interested only in caring out his "plan". This means that he aims only to help Emily (a great Rosario Dawson) without an emotional investment that could be perceived as romantic. It's a rigid, self-reflexive strategy that Ben adheres to because his plan is almost business oriented: Find the strangers, see if they are worthy of being helped, and continue to bounce back and forth between lending a hand and allowing proper emotional distance. At one point in Seven Pounds, we are given a flashback to a previous life; a tragic scene that could be the genesis for Ben's turn to selfless provider. He is almost an emotional martyr, which would seem overbearing and precious if Smith didn't give his character such a measured performance.

Woody Harrelson plays Ezra Turner, another of Ben's "finds", a blind man who gives piano lessons and works at a call center. He is actually the catalyst for Ben's turn to caregiver. Though Muccino considers the relationship between Ben and

Emily as more central to the story's premise, it's Ezra who accords more interesting cinematic possibilities. He is at once a loner and also a caregiver himself; he teaches piano lessons to children and somehow manages to stay levelheaded at a call-center. It's an interesting contrast to Ben, and I wish that Muccino had spent more time with this character, but there is a reason for this.

Essentially, Emily is a conduit for a kind of emotion that Ben has not felt in quite some time. She is his discovery that, at least externally, pushes him to feel something more, and Muccino appropriates a large portion of Seven Pounds to observing the possibilities of a relationship born out of wanting to help; it could soon change, however, when Ben's secret is pushed into the foreground. There is a seen, carefully shot, where is brother (Michael Ealy) finally catches on to Ben's secret and catches him in the act of caregiver. It's a cinematic bridge for an element of change, for something difficult to rear its head and bring an emotional core to the film that it only suggested before. It means that Ben, who a this point has become a saint, is really a liar who ostensibly lied to his "discoveries" in an effort to get closer to them.

This is a crucial problem with Seven Pounds. It offers dramatic tension and, despite its lack of great set pieces, which are mostly devoid of life, its dialogue is consistent and not cloying or artificial. But the audience is being toyed with here. An I.R.S. agent ditching his post to help total strangers? A blind man and a beautiful woman awaiting a life-saving heart transplant? As plot devices, they are sensible. After all, a tax collector is the last person someone would want to receive help from. A woman needing a new heart, a blind-man who is content and yet cannot see the beauty around him. For some reason, these devices in Seven Pounds feel more tacked on and less developed than they should have. It almost feels like a farce, and if Muccino hadn't designated a large portion of the running time to carefully unraveling Ben's mystery, the answers to these questions wouldn't seem so deceptive. Seven Pounds delivers great performances and exacting dialogue, and despite that turn towards predictability and moral conclusiveness, it moves gracefully and with a real awareness for purposeful human qualities. If it had considered some less overly sentimental means to arriving at its destination, its purpose would parallel its inherent mystery more successfully. Definitely worth watching, but if you catch yourself crying, be careful "” it's more crocodile tears than heartfelt emotion.

Seven Pounds has some decent special features: deleted scenes, a features entitled Seven Views on Seven Pounds, Creating the Perfect Ensemble, and audio commentary with director Gabriele Muccino. Seven Views feels

like one of those marketing tools that hypes up the movie with selective commentary from its staff and crew. Writer Grant Nieporte discusses the origins of the Seven Pounds story, and Will Smith admits his interest in Ben's character. Still, this feature is mostly compelling; the film's creation is in the hands of some very capable people. The deleted scenes, unfortunately, are not revelatory; otherwise, they might have been left in the film.

Movie Grade: C+

DVD Features Grade: B

Overall Grade: B-