7 Pounds with Will Smith

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

A friend of ours recommended we watch the movie 7 Pounds last fall. I'm not going to try to remember who that friend was because I'd have to tell them the movie sucked. The movie begins with Will Smith's character calling 911 to report his own suicide and then attempts to fill in the back story. The movie is well acted in every scene but the story jumps around enough that I couldn't tell if Smith's character was supposed to be a creepy IRS agent or a noble and generous hero.

In the end it was revealed that Smith's character was a tortured soul who had killed 7 people including his wife in a car accident. Consumed by guilt he went on a mission to help save 7 other people by helping them out immensely, generally by donating an organ. The movie ends with the hero committing suicide so that his heart could be donated to his love interest and his eyes could be donated to a stranger. Actually that wasn't the end, in the end it showed the recipient of the heart transplant meeting the recipient of the eye transplant, both living healthy, happy lives. I just can't imagine that's how people would react - I'm sure they would be dealing with their own guilt and emotional torture every day.

The movie was simply wrong in it's portrayal of almost all of the characters. One thing it did underscore for me was the incredible and destructive power of guilt and how much we need true forgiveness - if only that was part of the movie.