This was a languid, tepid-paced fluff piece which was poorly edited and far too long, it dragged on at times with the audience constantly whispering, “what’s going on”. I had the misfortune of reading the synopsis before the movie, and that did me in, because I wasn’t as captivated as the rest of the audience as they twitched in their seats trying to figure out what the hell was happening. Still, if you paid strict attention, you could piece most of it together by the mid-way mark, or sooner.
Will Smith does an average job playing a somewhat normal guy, Ben Thomas, whose life is shattered by a terrible tragedy from which he never recovers. Will Smith tries to reconcile his character at times, painfully, almost like he didn’t prepare for the role in earnest. You can see he tried really hard, but you could clearly see him trying. Rosario Dawson was exceptional in her role as dying woman, Emily Posa, drowning in debt. She effortlessly portrayed the victim archetype, while several of the supporting characters were far more interesting than Will Smith’s, Ben Thomas.
The vagueness of the story, and the choppy editing lend to the suffering of overall character development. Empathy is hard to capture when scenes are chopped in with schizophrenic sloppiness. Director Gabriele Muccino assumes the audience knows too much.
This movie won’t fly with real American audiences; it will be one of those films that uber-critical film students and euro-trash wannabes will claim is “too smart for American audiences”. But, I am here to tell you, it is ok for you not to like this movie, really, it’s going to be ok, even if Oscar-winning editor, Hughes Winborne edited this film – I grant you permission to be annoyed. Will Smith and Rosario Dawson were actually at the screening I saw, and I would let Will know personally that this movie just wasn’t his best piece of work – albeit not his fault.
Still, the film will entertain you with its unique message and quirky character acting. You’ll be pulled into the story, and you will care about the people – the film does not fail in that regard. It has a power and emotion that are hard to miss, but almost like the dissonant chords used in the scoring, the build-up (the crescendo) never develops fully for any of the characters. At best, I’d rent this one.
We got to the premiere late and only managed to snap this picture of Rosario Dawson arriving.
