OK, so Will Smith is sad because he caused the death of his beloved wife and a bunch of other innocent souls, and now is suicidal. He impersonates his brother’s IRS identity and goes on moral audits of people, people that we find he is scoping out for eventual organ donations–where the organs being donated are his own.

At first you might not see where the movie is going. You might think that he really is just an eccentric IRS man, a former hotshot entrepreneur that lost it after the tragic accident. However, when the meandering strands start falling into place, you begin to realize what is happening.

The disparate strands keep you guessing, and sometimes to the detriment to the emotional depth of the movie–because you could never fully settle into the lives of any of the characters, other than Will Smith’s character. For example, Woody Harrelson’s fine turn as a blind telephone operator/piano player gets somewhat short-shrifted, mostly in order to develop Will Smith and Rosario Dawson’s blooming romance. Many aspects of the plot defy belief, but overall, there was great chemistry and charisma in the two leads as they slowly, haltingly, did a little dance and then finally got around to making a little love. Dawson’s character has a failing heart that puts her at fate’s mercy, and the tremulous romance that develops between someone on the verge of death and someone who has planned his own death–opposites, in that regard–is quite interesting. Dawson has a lot of charisma. She can take something as far-fetched as this role and use her naturally accessible beauty to make it completely believable.

Part of that is because she isn’t say, Nicole Kidman. Rosario Dawson is the undiscovered Latina beauty next door that vast idiotic mass of men somehow managed to ignore. I can’t say the same for Will Smith–being, after all, the black actor with the most star power working in Hollywood today. He tries to be shy, diffident, damaged, despairing–and for the most part, he pulls off this range, though for the longest time you still stare at his face and say to yourself, “this is Will Smith”. This is an aspect of the modern cinema-going experience that I wonder if anyone has explored–that is, how does someone’s off-screen fame and media exposure influence the way that we judge their performances. Of course, it’s not to say that our criterion are warped by their fame, just that the basic act of suspension of disbelief, upon which the act of watching movies is predicated, becomes that much harder when you are talking about someone famous.

The industry perpetuates that, of course, by making them take huge roles. Thus Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman do roles like the ones in Australia. You aren’t going to find them in small indie, character-driven movies anytime soon. As far as recent movies go, I would have to say that Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler or any of the actors in Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World was much better, in terms of bringing the emotional truth of a character out.

So as far as Seven Pounds goes, I would have to say that the movie ain’t terrible, but fairly forgettable as they go.