Seven Pounds (2008)
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.
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19 films that influenced Seven Pounds
What critics say influenced Seven Pounds
You might have to go back to Claude Laydu in Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest to see an actor undergoing such exquisite anguish as Will Smith does in Gabriele Muccino’s Seven Pounds.
(Remember Bill Murray in "The Razor's Edge"?)
Grant Nieporte’s first produced feature film script is an aborted attempt at the seasonal inspirational genre that films like The Bishop’s Wife and especially It’s a Wonderful Life and The Miracle on 34th Street aced.
But Muccino and screenwriter Grant Nieporte (a TV scribe from 8 Simple Rules ...) go for the mawkish gotcha at every opportunity, turning what could have been a touching portrait of loss into a morbid collision of It’s a Wonderful Life and Love Story .
The debut screenplay from Grant Nieporte, whose previous credits includes three combined episodes of TV�s Sabrina the Teenage Witch and 8 Simple Rules, maintains its mysterioso Pay It Forward-like mentality for the first few scenes, but once those restraints are obviously lifted (no later than Ben signing a particularly titled form) it is still under the impression that its hiding from us in an effort to hammer home a resolution that is absent of any poignancy whatsoever and would be laughed off an episode of ER.
Smith’s reunion with director Gabriele Muccino (the far more tolerable “The Pursuit of Happyness”) is basically “Pay It Forward” meets “Babel.”
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I am reminded of a film you should see some day, Melville's " Le Samourai ," about a man who lies on a bed in a dark hotel room and smokes, and gets up, and pays meticulous attention to his appearance, and goes out into the night, and we have no idea who this man is.
Besides being inextricably linked to 1988's spoof extraordinaire "The Naked Gun," the lyrics don't exactly lend themselves to an elementary school choir ("I walked her home and she held my hand/I knew it wouldn't be just a one-night stand").
All but Emily prove to be minor figures in the story which, in the end, hews closer to the beats of a conventional Love Story -type romance than an unconventional drama.
But Muccino and screenwriter Grant Nieporte (a TV scribe from 8 Simple Rules ...) go for the mawkish gotcha at every opportunity, turning what could have been a touching portrait of loss into a morbid collision of It’s a Wonderful Life and Love Story .
An extended episode of "Secret Millionaire", Seven Pounds transforms a Melvin and Howard conceit into the story of an undercover Samaritan intent on changing the lives of seven worthy strangers.
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The film’s campiness might then pull in a different sort of aficionados—those who celebrate films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”—Kirk…
All that said, Smith is really strong here, recalling his incredible work in 1993's "Six Degrees of Separation."
Which is to say that Ben Thomas is a well-meaning impostor, a persona that echoes not only The Pursuit of Happyness but also Smith's breakthrough movie role in Six Degrees of Separation.
Like Happyness, it depicts a man with a hidden life, a notion central to Smith's debut, Six Degrees of Separation.
He did that 15 years ago in "Six Degrees of Separation," and two years ago in "The Pursuit of Happyness."