(Movie) Seven Pounds directed by Gabriel Muccino

This movie had come highly recommended from a friend, who told me that this was a movie that would affect me for days…

Sadly, by the middle of the movie, I was stifling yawns.

Its one of the movies that aims only for the heart while trying its hardest to bypass the mind. It puts forward scenes which would try to make you feel bittersweet and make you realize the pain and the anguish and the sacrifice of the characters.

I found it all pretty phoney…

A man looking for redemption becomes a self-styled messiah and a judge of ‘good vs. bad people’, searching for people whom he can help by either giving up his house or giving his organs. Specious and self-serving charity, if you ask me.

Not only do I have a problem with the character deciding to commit suicide and upping the melodrama instead of trying to redeem himself by living his rest of his life in doing what he wants to do, I also have a problem of him acting God – in deciding whom should be saved and who should be not. Will Smith as Moses…

I mean why should he get involved with someone whom he can help only by dying himself is beyond me. She falls in love with him and he does too. And then he dies so she may live. Why? So that he is remembered? Selfish wont you say? Phoney script and completely opposite to the character portrayal that is sought to be brought out.

If he really wanted to help, why cant he do so anonymously? What is it except selfishness and a vague sense of megalomania?

The only reason you can see this movie is due to acting of Smith, which is muted and introverted while still powerful. Its not his fault really that the script itself is faulty. Rosario Dawson also packs a powerhouse role. The rest are fringe characters anyway. Woody Harrelson is wasted…

In the end, its only a weepy tearjerker aiming for those who want an empty headed cry on a gloomy Sunday. Bah!

Labels: love, movies, romance, sacrifice, sentimental

posted by Protik Basu @ 9:36 AM 0 Comments

(Movie) The Jacket directed by John Maybury

  This is a story of a man thrust into a mad world where he finds the only person he loves and who is worth saving even at the cost of his life. There is a twist though…the person he falls in love with is in the future and he is supposed to die 14 years before.

This is a love story which has a lot of elements of “Butterfly effect” in it. It has a sombre and grey air around it in which the acting of Adrien Brody particularly stands out. His haunted look throughout the movie goes perfectly with the theme of the movie. He dominates the movie completely and does a damn good job of it

The story takes its inspiration from a story by Jack London “The Star Rover” and is about Adrien Brody who is injured in the Gulf war, miraculously surviving a direct head wound, even though he is medically psychologically impaired, possibly suffering from amnesia. He helps Jackie and Jean (a daughter-mother duo) who are stranded on a roadside and in the process forms a bond with the little girl Jackie and shortly after gets innocently involved in a shooting and is implicated in the same. He is packed off to an asylum when he is released since he is considered insane. There, Dr Becker starts experimenting on him, in order to test his healing technique. Brody is strapped in a straitjacket and put in a morgue drawer with drugs pumped into him. It is here where he starts getting transported into the future (2007) where he meets Jackie, who has now grown up into an embittered miserable young woman. It is also then that he realizes that he is supposed to die four days later (in the present time)

The rest of the story is about how Brody tries to find out about the cause of his death and how he ultimately decides to deal with it.

I liked the last scene the best. The expression on Brody’s face, as compared to the rest of the movie, is amazing. It was as if he was at last at peace with himself, with his decision.

Watch it for a the different story line (though it has strong echoes from many other movies) and Brody’s acting…

Labels: love, movies, psychological, thriller

posted by Protik Basu @ 9:07 AM 0 Comments