Seven Pounds Revisited

Editor's Note: This contains spoilers, lots of them.

Against my better judgment, I saw Seven Pounds again, thinking maybe this time I would get the movie. I didn't. But it's been hard to say why because no one wants to spoil the twist.

Well, sorry, I am going to have to be the spoiler (and those who don't want to be spoiled, please read the editor's note).

I give a lot of credit to Will Smith for deciding to go after a challenging role like this, portraying someone who is decidedly off his rocker. Too bad the end result comes off as so shallow and self-serving, instead of as selfless as the writers may have meant this to be.

Smith is Ben Thomas, an IRS agent. At least that's what we think. In reality, he is Tim, a once-successful aeronautical engineer who had a beautiful wife and lived the good life. All that ended, when he tried driving and using his Blackberry at the same time. He ends up causing a massive car accident that kills both his wife and a family of six in a van.

Tim is distraught, filled with overwhelming guilt. And in his depression, he decides upon a nutty plan of redemption. He will donate his organs to complete strangers, including his heart after he commits suicide.

His mission is accomplished through harsh measures. He poses as his brother, Ben, who is an IRS agent. He culls through financial and medical information, and then he confronts people in bizarre ways to see if they truly deserve his "gift."

At the beginning of the movie, he calls up Ezra, a blind telemarketer played by Woody Harrelson. He interrogates him, makes appalling comments about his being Jewish and asks him teasingly whether he's even had sex. The behavior is infuriating.

And through the movie, as the tale is told through flashbacks, you try to figure out Smith's motivations. You see easily that he is troubled. Smith scrunches up his face to show Tim's immense pain. And you are completely drawn in, no doubt.

The movie brightens when he meets Emily Posa, played by Rosario Dawson in a luminous performance. Posa has congenital heart failure. She's dying and needs a heart transplant. Tim slowly and with reluctance falls in love. It is here that we see some of Tim's humanity coming back. He is being resurrected in some way by Posa's love.

Unfortunately, this bit of happiness doesn't last long. Tim goes through with his plan. He dumps ice into the tub, fills the tub with water and plops in with a jellyfish that ultimately kills him in the most painful way. And Posa has a heart from the man she just made love to hours before.

Tim is presented as somehow being heroic in his actions, selfless in fact. Yet, he is not. This is a man who is emotionally damaged. We know that his logic is affected by his ever-consuming guilt over what he did.

How his best friend, Dan, played by Barry Peppers, agreed to go along with Tim's plan is never really explained. All we get is scenes of Dan weeping as he makes the legal arrangements that allow Tim to donate his organs. We never know whether Dan ever really tried to talk Tim out of his plan or try to get him help. Why would anyone agree to a plan that involves their best friend committing suicide?

Somehow, the audience is supposed to see Tim as a Christ-like figure who gives his life for others, albiet this is a Christ-like figure who is tremendously flawed. Yet, Jesus Christ was following a larger plan laid out by God and it is one that he willingly accepted. Tim, on the other hand, is operating out of a viscerally painful place. He is doing this to assuage his guilt. He is selfish, caring nothing about how his choice will affect those who love him and want to help him.

Some may say that Tim killed himself because he knew he was the only person who could save Posa's life, that his heart was the perfect match. In other words, he did this out of a deep abiding love for Posa and that he would rather see her live a long time without him than a short time with him. I get that.

Yet, the fact remains that in the end, he made this decision, this awful decision, while suffering from deep depression, and I find that problematic. Morally, I was outraged that this film seemed to, even if not intentionally, make suicide kind of okay. It isn't nor is it ever.

Tim is not a hero. He is not a matyr. He is a man who was crying out for help, and no one heard him. He was looking for redemption and he finds it by doing the most self-destructing thing possible. He figures the best way to help people is by killing himself.

Both times I saw this movie, I kept wondering what the message was supposed to be. I kept wondering what I was supposed to get out of it. I kept wondering how Tim could have the audacity to appoint himself a judge of good character of people he doesn't even know.

And in addition, his decision to kill himself seems to be an overreaction to a mistake, horrible as it is, that any one of us is capable of making.

There is no doubt that he was broken. I just wish someone was there to help put him back together again.