Ben Thomas (Will Smith) is an IRS Tax Auditor who is prone to performing random acts of kindness to people. He has a unique way of selecting the people that he wants to perform these favors to, and goes on to the extent of donating his bone marrow and kidney to people for no apparent reason other than the fact that he just wants to do something good.

The first hour or so of this movie, the audience is left wondering as to why Ben actually performs these acts of kindness. The movie does show snippets of Ben being troubled by some disturbing memories of a car crash, and there is the news clipping that he keeps referring to which reads something like "Fatal car crash kills seven people". However, the viewer is not given a clear idea behind his motive for his actions.

One of his kindness target benefactors, Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson) has a heart condition and a rare blood type which makes it almost impossible for her to find a donor for a heart transplant. The movie picks up pace when Ben falls for Emily who in turn seems to love him despite the fact that she knows her days are numbered.

To add to the confusion, we are introduced to Ben's friend Dan who apparently seems to know what exactly Ben is upto, and also his brother, who turns out to be the actual Ben Thomas, IRS employee. The unravelling of the mysterious acts of Will Smith forms the climax and the crux of the movie 'Seven Pounds'. Albeit a simple script, Will Smith's wonderful portrayal of emotions and acting prowess take this movie to another different level altogether.

Like Roger Ebert said about this movie, the fact that the audience is completely kept out of the loop as to why Will Smith does what he does is what makes this movie so interesting and rivetting. All in all, a must watch movie for anybody who likes Will Smith, as this coupled with 'The Pursuit of Happyness' elevate him to one actor whose future projects will be eagerly anticipated.

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link
Allmovie link
Box Office Mojo link
Rotten Tomatoes link

LAMBScore for this movie

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  3. It moves slow, but once it gets to where it's going, you just can't take your eyes away from it. A very underrated film.

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A couple of reasons why I watched ‘Before the Rains’ were Santosh Sivan, its director and Nandita Das, its lead character. While I am a huge fan of Santosh Sivan’s cinematography in almost all of the movies in which he collaborated with Mani Ratnam (Roja, Iruvar, Dil Se, Raavanan, need I say more), the fact that I had seen quite a few interviews of his and he came across as this amazingly imaginative person who knows how to get the maximum detail in each and every frame of his piqued my interest in him. Santosh Sivan is almost like an university of cinematography and the script that he picked up for this movie lent itself to be filmed extraordinarily beautifully.

The second reason that I watched this movie was Nandita Das.
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Now if you are a book lover and a regular reader of the thriller action genre of books there's no way that you could have missed reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. This book made the literary circles and the bestseller lists of the world go ga-ga sometime ago.

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