Seven Pounds
Short description
Seven Pounds follows Ben Thomas, an IRS agent carrying a burden from his past. He sets out to change the lives of seven people he has never met, offering each of them help in a different form. His plan is deliberate and closely guarded, and those around him cannot see his reasons. It becomes harder to carry out when he meets Emily, a woman with a serious heart condition, and begins to fall in love with her, forcing him to weigh his original intentions against a future he did not expect.
Gabriele Muccino directed the film, his fourth feature and his second collaboration with Will Smith after The Pursuit of Happyness. Grant Nieporte wrote the screenplay, and Steve Tisch, Will Smith and James Lassiter produced. Will Smith plays Ben, with Rosario Dawson as Emily, Woody Harrelson as Ezra, Michael Ealy as Ben's brother, Barry Pepper as Dan and Elpidia Carrillo as Connie. The production involved 21 credited cast members and 97 credited crew.
Released in December 2008, the drama runs 123 minutes. Against a budget of 55 million US dollars, it took 168 million US dollars worldwide, a strong return. Audiences rate it 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb from 325,000 votes and 7.6 out of 10 on TMDB from 7,391 votes, while its critics' rating stands at 4.8 out of 10 from 191 reviews, a clear gap between professional and public response.
What's left behind the scenes
- Will Smith personally chose the actor for the role of the main character's brother, Michael.
- In one of the scenes, Ezra performs Mozart's Fantasia in D minor on a piano in a supermarket.
- For most of the film, Smith's character lives at the "Travel Inn" hotel in Los Angeles. This is the same hotel where the main character of "Memento" (2000) stayed.
- Woody Harrelson plays a character named Ezra Turner, whose profession is a butcher. Harrelson also played another butcher, Mickey Knox, in the film "Natural Born Killers" (1994).
- Ezra – the name of Harrelson's character – translates from Hebrew as "help" or "assistance".
- In addition to the director and the lead actor, at least thirty other people who had previously worked on "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006) participated in the creation of the film, including actors and crew members (costume designers, editors, decorators, etc.).
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