Seven Pounds: Pound Foolish

A film cannot be judged by its intentions; it must be judged by what it actually accomplishes, and Seven Pounds creates a monster divide between the two.

The trouble begins with the title, a reference to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock, a vengeful money lender, attempts to exact a "pound of flesh" from a defaulting borrower. Shylock is foiled when the judge points out that while he may, indeed, have a contract right to the borrower's flesh, that right does not extend to the blood in that flesh.

The moral is clear: the consequences of our actions should be commensurate with them. In Seven Pounds, however, Ben Thomas (Will Smith) is no money borrower. He is merely a careless young man, happily in love, who momentarily loses concentration on the highway, and seven people -- including his beloved wife -- die.

What in the play is racially-motivated revenge by Shylock is mere carelessness in the movie, yet Smith, understandably tormented, must literally take his own life to "repay" the lives he accidentally took on that highway.

This confusion about the difference between accident and purposeful acts is the core problem with the film, and no amount of mute, tortured staring into the dark future on Smith's part can approximate the evil intent of Shakespeare's preeminent villain, Shylock.

Yet Smith trudges from scene to scene, racked with guilt, attempting to atone for his "sin," and it's a too-clever script (only in places, sadly) that unfolds the details of the accident at a snail's pace, so we are left wondering what exactly happened right up until the final scene.

This sort of manipulative storytelling is a minor sin compared to the false moral equivalence between fecklessness and wicked intention, but no less aggravating. "A" for effort, "F" for achievement, results in a "C" grade, acceptable for a Redbox rental but little more.