Sap and cheese aren't just the chief ingredients of an especially disgusting breakfast, they're the chosen weapons of Hollywood tearjerkers.
But evoking emotions in an audience is like killing a relative for the insurance money. You have to be sneaky. You can't just pack your film with heartfelt speeches and dying but brave children--the cinematic equivalent of the candlestick in the observatory--it needs to be subtle enough that emotion appears without us realizing where and how it happened. You know, like poisoning your spouse with mercury-laced salmon, or bumping your grandpa off the edge of a scenic cliff. Prove that one, cops.
Will Smith isn't known for subtlety, but then I'm not known for not being lazy, and just the other day I got out of bed. Tomorrow, I might brush my tooth. If Smith's new movie Seven Pounds isn't wholly sap- and cheese-free, it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Several years ago, Smith was in a car wreck that killed seven people, including his wife. Now, as an IRS auditor, he's trying to atone by giving tax breaks to those in desperate circumstances -- if they're good people.
Among them is Rosario Dawson, a woman with a congenital heart defect and a load of medical bills. Smith clears up her tax problems, but Dawson begins to fall for him -- and though he's guilt-crippled by what he's done and distracted by the other people he's trying to help, he starts to develop feelings for her, too.
By all rights, here's what Seven Pounds should have been: Will Smith is vulnerable but good-hearted, he charms his way into our hearts and pants, everyone ends up happy and has beautiful babies, handkerchiefs are passed out in the theater, roll credits.
Instead, it's an understated, gimmick-free journey that largely avoids naked sentiment through the ancient secret of what we in the biz call "good writing." Writer Grant Nieporte, who's only worked in TV to this point, gives Smith and Dawson deceptively simple dialogue that ends up sounding natural instead of forcedly clever. Rather than Smith kicking in the ultra-charm like a RomanceBot 3000 who's two smooth lines from exploding while Dawson sits around and looks pretty, their relationship finds a way to be quiet, strange, but plausible.
Oh, and you know how in real life, people never, ever say how they feel because talking about feelings is scary and we're all putrid, stinking cowards? The people in Seven Pounds never come right out with it either, yet their emotions still emerge clearly. Godlike feat of screenwriting prowess? More like basic competence, but the thing about basic competence is most people don't have it.
This naturalism extends to Smith's big plan, which is kept secret (until being weirdly telegraphed by director Gabriele Muccino about two-thirds in) without the use of dirty tricks and outright manipulation common to directors who think we're all stupid jerks who deserve to have the rug yanked out from us so hard our heels burst into flame.
As for Smith's finale, it's gonna be divisive -- in isolation, it's too neat by half, and it's sappy as a lumberjack's flannel. Also, it's inspiring, which is another word for "idiotic." But after the controlled and understated story that led up to it, I bought it, and my heart's so black pumping ink would actually make it whiter.
There are moments in its middle when it meanders, and it can't always keep its melodramatic tendencies under control. But by consistently underplaying its most emotional scenes, Seven Pounds comes off better than it had any right to be.
Grade: B