Saw a movie, now I'm mad...
Seven Pounds. It came out two years ago. I never heard anything about it 'til I saw it and I am now in a mood to rant. So I'll put a cut in here somewhere and leave it at that. I like Will Smith, I like Rosario Dawson, I don't really like Great Danes, and I hate the IRS.
What is the movie about? Well, see that's the thing. I watched the whole movie without ever understanding that bit. It is supposed to be about an IRS Agent (Smith) who is trying to help some folks somehow because something shitty happened to him before the movie started.
Also the first lines in the film tell you how it's going to end, and it doesn't even make that outcome interesting. The opening makes Smith look like a self absorbed shit-bag and that first impression never really diminishes over the remaining 121 and a half minutes of the movie. Just to review what we have so far. The movie starts at the end and never actually explains what happened to Smith until the last what; ten minutes. This has the singular effect of preventing the audience (me) from ever having the first fucking clue as to why Smith should be a sympathetic character. But if he spends the whole movie helping people, right...RIGHT, but he doesn't help people. He stalks them, corners them, attacks them by any means at his disposal and only as an afterthought sort of accidentally helps them. If they don't piss him off.
Rosario asks him at one point, "Why do I get the feeling you are doing me a really big favor?" 'Cause he makes it so fucking obvious he is doing all these people really big favors, is why she gets that feeling, but what he says is even better. He replies, "Because I get the feeling you really deserve it." Thanks a bunch you giant douche because not only did that not make any sense, but it also means Rosario had to pass your personal righteousness test and she didn't even know her whole existence would be on the final.
Smith says at one point, "I don't want to lie to you anymore."...and that's good enough for her, she never even asks him what he is lying to her about, which by the way is everything that has ever come out of his mouth. He isn't an agent with the Treasury, he doesn't do audits for the IRS. He was an engineer and worked for an aerospace company before the really bad thing we can't know about happened.
After that really bad thing happened he became a straight up nutcase, serial organ donor and stalker of very decent people. As far as we know he has only ever donated his own organs though so that's something, at least. He finds people whom he deems worthy of little pieces of himself and then makes sure they legally have to take them from him.
At one point he branches out and helps the shit out of a mother of two who is regularly beaten by her boyfriend. Smith ambushes her at home, in front of her kids and basically threatens to help her until she likes it. She tells him to fuck off, but it's cool. She eventually comes crawling back like they always do, and then the helping really takes a turn for the worse.
Everything in this movie is engineered to make the minimum amount of sense possible. Rosario has a Great Dane named Buddy, who is a vegetarian because Dawson wants to fix the breed's well known relatively short life span by feeding this enormous carnivore steamed broccoli and tofu for it's entire life. I swear all of that is in the script!
The only victim Smith doesn't directly assault at least emotionally is a little boy who needs bone marrow and I'm sure it's only because the writer or director couldn't figure out how to bring Wil Smith and a seven year old chemo-kid into direct physical conflict without straining the bounds of basic credulity, even in a modern theater going audience. So to protect us I guess from any hint of normalcy Wil ONLY stalks this kid from a distance and we never even get to meet him, but only scan him from behind security glass like Smith does in several mildly hinky sequences.
Wil's best friend played by Barry Pepper manages to collude with Smith for, come to find out, several years to ensure all his psychotic endeavors don't land him in Chino. All I could think once I figured out who Pepper was was, "Why not just get together with Smith's brother, who IS a Treasury Agent and have the idiot committed to a high quality mental facility since he is obviously filthy fucking rich." That question is addressed in a weird ass scene where Barry gets pelted with garbage when he tries to share a painful secret with Wil. At this point it is clear to me that not only did Wil beat his own fiance, but his best friend Barry as well, and maybe even his brother, who seems utterly terrified of Wil even when they are only talking over the telephone.
Every line of dialog begs the question, "Who talks like this?" From Wil Smith calling someone a "Good Egg" to an exchange where I am still not sure I didn't have a stroke and imagine the following:
Rosario to Home Care Nurse- "Did you like the eggs?" Clears plates from table with an idiot grin.
Home Care Nurse smiles and nods enthusiastically, -"I didn't really like the eggs very much!"
Then Nurse sits with the most profound look of horror on her face, like she had just been served ripe walrus blubber, and seal placenta.
<<>>
What was the really bad thing that happened to Smith we never get to know until it's way to late to help in any way, ready?
Nothing, really. He was the cause of a major traffic accident. Several people died and his fiance was one of them. It was years ago. How did he have the accident? He was texting while driving. More precisely he was receiving a text, or possibly browsing William Shatner's Wikipedia entry because I have never seen that much text on a Blackberry screen before in my life. They were killed by multiple paragraphs of itty tiny 1pt font. He walked away, and was never even cited for the accident as near as I could tell. The accident was clearly multi-manslaughters. He should have been in prison for at least twenty five years. They could have constructed an accident scenario wherein upon witnessing it I didn't instantly wonder how he was walking in daylight anytime before he was geriatric The makers of the movie could have thrown me that bone at least, but no. Blatant vehicular mass murder by negligence. Too bad a judge couldn't have watched the film. He could have taken this menace right out of circulation. Oh well.
After all is said and done Smith has three last fucks for you; or rather me, as the audience.
Fuck the first, he decides to commit suicide in about the only way possible so as to endanger the poor bastards who happen upon his corpse. Also he appears to have been waiting for just such an opportunity since he was twelve years old.
Fuck the second, in the form of his penultimate sacrifice, to Rosario Dawson. She gets his heart but he kills himself in such a way as to all but guarantee the thing is a totally useless knob of gristle by the time she gets it into her bony breast.
Fuck the last; I hope, is in the gift of sight he bestows on Woody Harrelson the blind piano player of LA. For some reason when they do the corneal transplant from Wil Smith to old Woodster the clear corneas which are the only parts you get in an eye transplant magically transform their new eyeballs into the spitting image of Smith's own nut brown peepers; for no medical or scientific reason whatsoever.
I'm done, now you can drink.
What is the movie about? Well, see that's the thing. I watched the whole movie without ever understanding that bit. It is supposed to be about an IRS Agent (Smith) who is trying to help some folks somehow because something shitty happened to him before the movie started.
Also the first lines in the film tell you how it's going to end, and it doesn't even make that outcome interesting. The opening makes Smith look like a self absorbed shit-bag and that first impression never really diminishes over the remaining 121 and a half minutes of the movie. Just to review what we have so far. The movie starts at the end and never actually explains what happened to Smith until the last what; ten minutes. This has the singular effect of preventing the audience (me) from ever having the first fucking clue as to why Smith should be a sympathetic character. But if he spends the whole movie helping people, right...RIGHT, but he doesn't help people. He stalks them, corners them, attacks them by any means at his disposal and only as an afterthought sort of accidentally helps them. If they don't piss him off.
Rosario asks him at one point, "Why do I get the feeling you are doing me a really big favor?" 'Cause he makes it so fucking obvious he is doing all these people really big favors, is why she gets that feeling, but what he says is even better. He replies, "Because I get the feeling you really deserve it." Thanks a bunch you giant douche because not only did that not make any sense, but it also means Rosario had to pass your personal righteousness test and she didn't even know her whole existence would be on the final.
Smith says at one point, "I don't want to lie to you anymore."...and that's good enough for her, she never even asks him what he is lying to her about, which by the way is everything that has ever come out of his mouth. He isn't an agent with the Treasury, he doesn't do audits for the IRS. He was an engineer and worked for an aerospace company before the really bad thing we can't know about happened.
After that really bad thing happened he became a straight up nutcase, serial organ donor and stalker of very decent people. As far as we know he has only ever donated his own organs though so that's something, at least. He finds people whom he deems worthy of little pieces of himself and then makes sure they legally have to take them from him.
At one point he branches out and helps the shit out of a mother of two who is regularly beaten by her boyfriend. Smith ambushes her at home, in front of her kids and basically threatens to help her until she likes it. She tells him to fuck off, but it's cool. She eventually comes crawling back like they always do, and then the helping really takes a turn for the worse.
Everything in this movie is engineered to make the minimum amount of sense possible. Rosario has a Great Dane named Buddy, who is a vegetarian because Dawson wants to fix the breed's well known relatively short life span by feeding this enormous carnivore steamed broccoli and tofu for it's entire life. I swear all of that is in the script!
The only victim Smith doesn't directly assault at least emotionally is a little boy who needs bone marrow and I'm sure it's only because the writer or director couldn't figure out how to bring Wil Smith and a seven year old chemo-kid into direct physical conflict without straining the bounds of basic credulity, even in a modern theater going audience. So to protect us I guess from any hint of normalcy Wil ONLY stalks this kid from a distance and we never even get to meet him, but only scan him from behind security glass like Smith does in several mildly hinky sequences.
Wil's best friend played by Barry Pepper manages to collude with Smith for, come to find out, several years to ensure all his psychotic endeavors don't land him in Chino. All I could think once I figured out who Pepper was was, "Why not just get together with Smith's brother, who IS a Treasury Agent and have the idiot committed to a high quality mental facility since he is obviously filthy fucking rich." That question is addressed in a weird ass scene where Barry gets pelted with garbage when he tries to share a painful secret with Wil. At this point it is clear to me that not only did Wil beat his own fiance, but his best friend Barry as well, and maybe even his brother, who seems utterly terrified of Wil even when they are only talking over the telephone.
Every line of dialog begs the question, "Who talks like this?" From Wil Smith calling someone a "Good Egg" to an exchange where I am still not sure I didn't have a stroke and imagine the following:
Rosario to Home Care Nurse- "Did you like the eggs?" Clears plates from table with an idiot grin.
Home Care Nurse smiles and nods enthusiastically, -"I didn't really like the eggs very much!"
Then Nurse sits with the most profound look of horror on her face, like she had just been served ripe walrus blubber, and seal placenta.
<<>>
What was the really bad thing that happened to Smith we never get to know until it's way to late to help in any way, ready?
Nothing, really. He was the cause of a major traffic accident. Several people died and his fiance was one of them. It was years ago. How did he have the accident? He was texting while driving. More precisely he was receiving a text, or possibly browsing William Shatner's Wikipedia entry because I have never seen that much text on a Blackberry screen before in my life. They were killed by multiple paragraphs of itty tiny 1pt font. He walked away, and was never even cited for the accident as near as I could tell. The accident was clearly multi-manslaughters. He should have been in prison for at least twenty five years. They could have constructed an accident scenario wherein upon witnessing it I didn't instantly wonder how he was walking in daylight anytime before he was geriatric The makers of the movie could have thrown me that bone at least, but no. Blatant vehicular mass murder by negligence. Too bad a judge couldn't have watched the film. He could have taken this menace right out of circulation. Oh well.
After all is said and done Smith has three last fucks for you; or rather me, as the audience.
Fuck the first, he decides to commit suicide in about the only way possible so as to endanger the poor bastards who happen upon his corpse. Also he appears to have been waiting for just such an opportunity since he was twelve years old.
Fuck the second, in the form of his penultimate sacrifice, to Rosario Dawson. She gets his heart but he kills himself in such a way as to all but guarantee the thing is a totally useless knob of gristle by the time she gets it into her bony breast.
Fuck the last; I hope, is in the gift of sight he bestows on Woody Harrelson the blind piano player of LA. For some reason when they do the corneal transplant from Wil Smith to old Woodster the clear corneas which are the only parts you get in an eye transplant magically transform their new eyeballs into the spitting image of Smith's own nut brown peepers; for no medical or scientific reason whatsoever.
I'm done, now you can drink.