Film review: Seven pounds

Director: Gabriele Muccino
Starring: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson
On at: : Cityplex, Hollywood Multiplex, Starplex, The Light

So far, so intriguing. Is it a cry for help? Does he hope to be saved? What has driven him to such a desperate act? The film then flashes back to fill us in on prior events.
We see Will going about his duties as a tax inspector. At this point, you might be thinking that this isn't going to make for a very exciting film, and maybe he should get back to saving the world from aliens while delivering witty one-liners.
But wait. This is no ordinary tax inspector. Instead of poring over balance sheets with a calculator, Will becomes part stalker, part agony uncle to his tax defaulters, dividing them neatly into deserving and non-deserving of tax breaks. If they are exceptionally pretty young women, like Rosario Dawson, he also dates them.
It doesn't seem a particularly professional way to run the Internal Revenue Service. But there is more than it seems to Will's cavalier execution of his obligations.
All of the debtors happen to be seriously ill. And in between visits, Will spends a lot of time looking out to sea in a troubled manner, shouting out seven names in anguish and suffering flashbacks of a car crash and him frolicking on the beach with an attractive woman. He also phones up a blind call center worker (Woody Harrelson) and abuses him, while giving away most of his possessions. I did say it was original.
Slowly (the film lasts over two hours) the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place, and Will's mission becomes apparent. Literary-minded viewers will at this point recognise the significance of the title, which is a Shakespearian reference to The Merchant of Venice and Shylock's “pound of flesh”. You might not readily associate Shakespeare and Will Smith – although they do of course have the same first name and same initials. This is another incongruity of a thoroughly incongruous film.
Seven Pounds is part drama, part romance. The best bit is the drama. The story really is quite unusual and at times shocking. With a puzzle at the heart of the narrative, it doesn't spoon-feed its viewers as much as you
might expect. That said, this is Hollywood – the puzzle is not exactly Rubik's Cube-like in
its fiendishness (car crash, fiance who is no longer around, Will looking tortured with guilt… Hmm, what could have happened here?). Melodrama, cringe-worthiness and overblown sentiment abound, particularly in the romantic subplot, and the film is often guilty of taking itself very seriously indeed.
But since the lowbrow start to his career, Will Smith has become a competent and convincing actor, and he acquits himself well enough in the part of the enigmatic tax inspector. Harrelson is a believable blind man, and Dawson makes the best out of what is, despite the serious subtext of her illness, a stock love interest role. Despite the film's many flaws, the end is quite touching, though I'm still glad I didn't pay seven pounds.

Debbie Stowe