Seven Pounds, unfortunately, is pretty bad. I expected something along the lines of The Pursuit of Happiness, which was a sweet, well-acted tear-jerker. Unfortunately, what I got was a movie that was so illogical and predictable that all the emotion was drained right out of it. A good cast absolutely wasted.

Plot:
Ben Thomas wants to atone. Therefore, he looks for seven complete strangers and changes their lives for the better. But why does he do it and how does he do it? Guess.

[SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS]

Turns out that Ben was involved in a car accident, which killed his wife and six other people. And now he wants to make it up to the universe. And because he has a rare bloodtype, he has the glorious idea to donate his organs one by one, the last one of which is his heart, which goes to the woman he fell in love with. How poetic!
[Unfortunately, if you’re not completely braindead, you will guess this “twist” about 20 minutes into the movie. The latest.]

The movie starts with its strongest scene – which is a tactical error if ever I saw one. Will Smith calls some kind of meat hotline and talks to Woody Harrelson. [I wonder how often he had to call that hotline to talk to him directly and not somebody else working in that call center…] Then Smith starts to insult Harrelson on the lowest possible level. After the phone call is finished, Smith starts crying and repeats seven names over and over.
This scene is emotional, perfectly acted and leaves you with a distinct WTF? feeling.

Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there.

We see Smith tumbling through the movie, the perfect portrayal of a depressed man: aimless, energyless, lifeless. The problem is that I don’t see a depressed men pulling this off. I suffer(ed) from depression myself and I know that the main symptom of it is not being able to do anything at all. You don’t have the energy necessary to get out of bed, let alone plan to harvest your own organs to give to people – but only if they deserve it.

But even if I believed that a deeply depressed guy could find the strength necessary to organise all this, my question still remains: Why? Why do it like this? Why not kill yourself at once and let the hospital give away your organs as they see fit – meaning to the most urgent cases? Instead you go around playing God, deciding who’s worth to live with your organ and who isn’t. WTF?

Plus, why not do something for the family members of the people who died in the car accident and do something good for them instead of choosing people randomly because of their blood type and some arbitrary personality trait?

Apart from my issues with the content of the movie, it was much too long. And while I don’t have any problems with watching Will Smith, depressed Will Smith is not my case.

Rosario Dawson seems a bit like the manic pixie dream girl. Not entirely, but still. And that is sad.

When deadra and me left the cinema, we had the following conversation:

deadra: Give me a minute. I have to figure out why I didn’t like this movie.
me: Probably because it was boring and didn’t make sense.
deadra: That could be it. When I look at my watch before the first hour has passed that’s always a bad sign.

I couldn’t agree more.