Review : Seven Pounds

"In such a place, such sum or sums as are ein the condition, let the forfeite be nominated for an equall pound of your faire flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your bodie it pleaseth me." - The Merchant of Venice

Some debt can only be paid using flesh, or in this case, internal organs?

If watching movie with friends, or date or just not watching a film alone, I usually am no so picking. So when Seven Pounds is suggested, I was neither excited nor disappointed. I know it is a drama, and will not be my usual pick of genre, unless if it is a feature in the International Screen, but some 10 years ago I went to Stepmom against my will but it turned out to be a very enjoyable film. So in this case, there's chance it will be OK. The only thing bothers me is the review is not so positive. I did not read any review for this film deep enough, just skim through a couple of months before. It did not stay in the US box office top 10 chart for long.

But since the taste here and US is rather different, maybe we can accept it. And since film review is rather a subjective matter, we can't really trust them 100%. And so, to Seven Pounds we went. The first 10 minutes is rather uneventful. Maybe because they planned to give this movie a little twist ending, they do not disclose much about what happening. Some poor intentional jumble up of plot sequence served nothing to enrich the stylistic part of the film but make it more confusing and hard to chew in the beginning. If it is shown in TV, I will switch to another channel before it can reach page 6.

This is a drama, it explores the humanity in its characters. The viewers need to focus on the plot, what the characters is doing, what are their expression so that they can relate to them and travel the journey with them the whole film. But constant jump to montage of the past and the main character's dream sequence disturb our concentration. Just when I get to have some feeling, the fancy montage cut it away.

We get to know the reason Will's character has seven debts to pay using a pound of flesh each, but we are only serve mainly with two. There another one which appeared to be a messy case he discarded it rather quite, one case happen so abruptly we almost don't know what is going on and another to cases are told in a exposition manner.

It's about the love between to peoples who are going to die...

So at the end, the majority of the film is about a guy going to die is wooing a girl who will die any minute. We get to see what the character done but we do not see any changes in the character. From the very first minute up to the last, it is the same character we are watching, not redeeming moment, nothing. We have so little time for the character before the traumatic even that forbids us to know just how different this character was before and after.

In short, it has weak characterization. This is OK, for an action movie but a big NO NO for a drama. While Will is a great action but it is pain looking him just giving the same "I wanna sob" look in every scene.

The script really needs to be polished, the director really should set a clearer target and Will is really wasted. It does not have the inspiring effect a drama should have. Thus, it fail to serve the genre. But not too bad that you can laugh on.