December 19, 2008
Drama/Romance
PG-13
United States
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Recommended by: Christyl Johnson Klott
“In seven days, God created the world, and in seven seconds, I shattered mine.”
The story follows Ben Thomas (Will Smith) who works for the IRS as a tax collector in Los Angeles, California. The opening scene is him calling 911 to report a suicide. When asked who the victim is, he replies, “I am.” This sets the mood for the rest of the film, giving the viewer a sense of tension throughout. Ben carries a weight, and you can see it in his face. When he smiles, it never quite reaches his eyes, and the heaviness he emits is evident even in the way he moves. He lives in a beach house where he sleeps on the sofa. It’s completely trashed, where you can tell that he just doesn’t have any care in him about himself.
There are seven people to note in this movie: Ezra, Emily, George, Holly, Connie, Nicholas, and Tim. There is a very specific reason why Ben chose these people, and we will get into them one by one.
The first is Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson), who works for a meat delivering company, enjoys playing piano, and is completely blind. Ben calls him to complain about the meat he ordered, mostly on how bad it tastes. During the conversation, Ezra is trying to get information on Ben to review the order, but Ben’s temper keeps increasing. When Ezra finally manages to get Ben’s name, a computerized voice announces that there is no order for a Ben Thomas. Ben can hear it over the phone, and realizes that Ezra is blind. This takes the call in a completely different direction, where Ben insults Ezra’s blindness and just him as a person. He’s trying to get a reaction out of Ezra, but it never comes. Ezra is completely calm throughout the duration, and the most angry he gets is simply hanging up. At first, I thought Ben had an overwhelming anger problem, especially after the call when he breaks a chair. Turns out, there’s a far deeper meaning.
Then there’s Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), who Ben tries to get in contact with. He finds out that she’s in the hospital, and proceeds to follow her around. Naturally, she notices how much she’s seeing him and confronts him about it in the hospital’s cafeteria. He explains who he is and that he needs to audit her, as she’s several thousands of dollars in debt. Throughout the majority of the movie, we learn why: she had to quit her business as someone who makes wedding invitations, cards, and the like due to a congenital heart disease and her hospital bills keep racking up. She’s given less than two months to live if she doesn’t get a donor, and even has to have a nurse at her home. Now, this is a romantic piece, so obviously, Ben and Emily get closer. He shows up at her house to weed her yard and fix a printing machine that seems to not require so much physical labor to operate. At one point, Emily invites Ben over for dinner, and this scene is the only one where we see him truly smile.
The next is George Ristuccia (Bill Smitrovich). He’s not a big character, and we only see him once, but is an important person. George is in the hospital for a kidney transplant, and the exchange between him and Ben is about how good a person George is. He has paid for some kids to go to college (not his own), and when he asks Ben, “Why me?”, Ben responds with, “Because you’re a good man … Even when you don’t know that people are watching you.”
Holly Apelgren (Judyann Elder) is a social services worker who, when we first see her, clearly already has a history with Ben. Again, not a big character, but we find out that Ben had given her half of his liver. As a result, she’s willing to do any favor he needs. What he requests is a name: someone who needs help, but is too proud to ask for it.
This leads us to Connie Tepos (Elpidia Carrillo). This poor woman is in a terribly abusive relationship with her boyfriend and has two children who are stuck in the middle. Holly told Ben that Connie’s boyfriend broke some of her ribs a few months back and even tried to kill her when she attempted to leave a year before. So, Ben goes to Connie’s house and tells her he can help. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue is in Spanish and I couldn’t get the subtitles to work, so I don’t know exactly what they were saying, but was able to get the general impression. When Connie realizes exactly why Ben is there, she becomes angry and kicks him out of her house, but not before he can leave his card with her. A few days later, she calls him from a laundromat, crying, and says that she doesn’t know why she called, but wants to know if Ben really can help. He meets with her, gives her an envelope, and tells her where to go. She drives to his beach house, which has been completely cleaned and furnished, and opens the envelope where she finds a note. He tells her that all she has to do is sign on the dotted line, and the house is hers outright. All he asks is for her to not contact him for any reason and to live life abundantly. She does.
Nicholas (Quintin Kelley) is the one we really know the least about. He’s just a young boy who suffers from what I’m assuming is leukemia. Ben sees him off and on during his trips to the hospital, and decides to donate some of his bone marrow.
The final person we learn about is Tim. Earlier in the film, Emily passes out due to her heart not pumping enough blood to her brain and ends up, once again, in the hospital. She calls Ben and has him tell her a story. He decides on one about a little boy named Tim who wanted to fly. He strapped leaves and branches to his arms, climbed a tree, and jumped off, which led to a broken arm, but an ever-growing passion for flight. When Ben takes Emily home from the hospital, she begins asking questions about his personal life, and he reveals that he went to MIT because he wanted to be an engineer for a space program. I think this is when I started to realize something was off.
The night Emily invites Ben to her home for dinner, his brother shows up. He’s someone we’ve seen here and there, but don’t know too much about until he demands to have his credentials back and keeps calling Ben “Tim”. It’s this moment we see that Ben Thomas is actually the brother, and Will Smith’s real character is Tim, and that he had been impersonating Ben, including working for the IRS.
After the exchange with Ben, Emily and Tim spend the night together, and admit that they’re in love with each other. At this point, she doesn’t know Tim’s true identity. After she falls asleep, Tim runs to the hospital to find out, statistically, how likely Emily has of surviving. When he’s given three to five percent, he makes a decision.
Off and on, we see a man who is a good friend of Tim’s named Dan Morris (Barry Pepper), and during their brief interactions, we know that Dan is aware of what Tim is planning. When Tim leaves the hospital, he calls Dan to tell him that it’s time, then immediately hangs up. It’s very early in the morning, and Dan is just sitting in his bed, crying.
Tim has rented out a motel room, where he’s been living since before giving his beach house to Connie. He returns there and calls up Ezra, where he apologizes for his behavior on the phone weeks before, and that the reason for it was to find out how good of a person Ezra is; if he was quick to anger. He then tells him that a man named Dan would be getting in contact with him and that Ezra could trust him. Then, Tim dials 911, and the opening scene plays again.
Tim told a story about how when he was twelve years old, his father took him and Ben to an aquarium, and that was the first time Tim had ever seen a box jellyfish. His father told him how deadly they are, but Tim thought they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He ends up owning some and sets up his own small aquarium for them to stay with him at the motel. After calling for an ambulance, Tim turns on the bathtub, fills it with ice, climbs in, and dumps his jellyfish into the water with him. They, of course, sting him, and stop his heart. The hospital tries to revive him, but are unsuccessful.
Why does Tim do all this? We find out from Ben, who is speaking to Emily, that a year before, Tim was involved in a car accident that claimed the lives of seven people, including his fiance, Sarah (Robinne Lee). The reason for the accident was due to Tim looking at his phone while driving. A few months after that, Ben was in need of at least one new lung, so Tim gave him one.
Ezra needed new eyes, Emily needed a new heart, George needed a new kidney, Holly needed a partial liver, Connie needed out of her abusive relationship, Nicholas needed bone marrow, and Ben needed a new lung. Seven lives saved for seven lives taken.
The ending scene is Ezra playing piano for a group of kids singing and Emily shows up. At the end of the show, she gets his attention, and when he turns to her, she gets to see Tim’s eyes. At first, he’s confused on who she is, but then sees the scar on her chest and realizes that it’s Emily. She’s crying, they hug, and the movie ends.
I told the person who recommended this to me for a review that I was surprised it’s not more well-known. It grossed drastically short of the budget on the opening weekend, though did end up doing well world-wide. I had never heard of it until just recently, and I’m a huge Will Smith fan.
So, what do I think of this film? I’m not much for tearjerkers, but I have to say, starting with the opening scene, I was completely enthralled. It’s kind of hard to follow at first, because, at least for me, I had a lot of questions about what was going on, but the end ties everything together rather nicely. If you like romantic dramas, I do think this is one to watch. It’s heartbreaking, but definitely worth seeing.
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