From today's Oregonian....
As D.K. Holm recently pointed out -- citing examples ranging from James Cagney to Steven Seagal -- "actors can be just as much the auteurs behind their films as directors." This seems especially true of male stars prone to action roles: Why, despite a rotating roster of directors, is Mel Gibson always getting tortured? Why does Tom Cruise have a long streak of films in which he learns a vocational skill or wears a mask? Why is Seagal always playing guitar and yakking about the environment? Why is Harrison Ford always rescuing his wife and holding up his Index Finger of Doom?
We can now definitively add to this list Will Smith -- who in "Seven Pounds" continues the lonely-messed-up-savior streak he started with "I Am Legend" and "Hancock."
"Pounds" reunites Smith with "Pursuit of Happyness" director Gabriele Muccino, and it's one of those "puzzle" films that build to a Big Reveal in their final minutes, making it more or less impossible to synopsize without wrecking the surprise. Let's try. Smith plays lonely, messed-up IRS agent Ben Thomas. He's making mysterious calls on troubled people -- including a including blind beef salesman (Woody Harrelson), a graphic designer with a heart ailment (Rosario Dawson) a cost-cutting nursing-home administrator (Tim Kelleher) and an abused mother (Elpidia Carrillo).
Ben comes off as part angel, part avenger, part creep, and his visits are clearly part of some secret agenda. But what? And why?
Unfortunately, the mystery is the whole movie, and the crypticism gets annoying fast if you figure out what's going on early (which you likely will -- I formed a mostly accurate working theory in fewer than 20 minutes). The film also becomes interminable when the bizarre main story comes to a screeching halt so the filmmakers can develop a late-movie insta-romance between Smith and Dawson.
All that said, Smith is really strong here. I loved his weak, sad smile and slight inarticulateness, which struck me as reasonably adventurous for an actor accused of coasting on charm. "Seven Pounds" is also beautifully shot (Muccino makes good use of the silhouette of Smith's jug-eared head ), it's ambitiously edited, and it features a tweaked piano melody on the soundtrack that manages to be simple, beautiful, sad and twisted in one go.
The movie gets just enough right that the things it doesn't get right (beyond its over-dependence on a not-so-surprising story puzzle) smack you cold in the face. For example: How ill, precisely, is Rosario Dawson's character supposed to be? Other than a few fainting spells, some pale makeup and a slight darkening under her gigantic limpid eyes, she strikes me as the most athletic, ambulatory and sexually alive terminally ill heart patient in recent film history. She takes long walks, wrangles a horse-sized Great Dane and even gets a bit carnal as occasion demands. Her romance with Smith is so conventional, so sudden, so deeply Hollywood, that it feels out of place in a movie trying so hard, albeit with limited success, to mess with your head.
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C; 118 minutes; rated PG-13 for thematic material, some disturbing content and a scene of sensuality.
'Seven Pounds' (The Oregonian, Dec. 19, 2008)
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