Seven(七宗罪)1995
David Fincher's classic tale of inventive serial killing and urban degredation, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman on excellent form
Who'd have thought? An absurd-sounding tale of a serial killer basing his crimes around the seven deadly sins, directed by the man behind the mess that was Alien3, turning out to be one of the most chilling and original thrillers of the 1990s.
From the outset, through the film's brilliantly designed deliberate under-lighting - we see very little blood and guts - and muffled sound, the audience is encouraged to lean towards the screen, immerse itself in the film's unbearably grim world.
Pitt is in career-making form as Mills, a simple cop moving with his sweet young wife (Paltrow) to a grim, anonymous city, determined to make a difference, to do some good. He is assigned to track down a vengeful killer, and works alongside Somerset (Freeman), a jaded, wise policeman on the verge of retirement.
The two are that modern movie cliché -the mismatched pair thrown together by circumstance, who gradually learn mutual respect. But Fincher and Walker take these hackneyed ingredients, play with them in the context of a brilliantly cohesive plot, and present something consistently fresh - the police finding themselves with too much evidence, the premature unmasking of the killer - and very, very dark.
1
Journey to the Center of the Earth（地心游记）2008 There is a part of me that will always have affection for a movie like "Journey to the Center of the Earth." It is a small part and steadily shrinking, but once I put on the 3-D glasses and settled in my seat, it started perking up. This is a fairly bad movie, and yet at the same time maybe about as good as it could be. There may not be an 8-year-old alive who would not love it. If I had seen it when I was 8, I would have remembered it with deep affection for all these years, until I saw it again and realized how little I really knew at that age. You are already familiar with the premise, that there is another land inside of our globe. You are familiar because the Jules Verne novel has inspired more than a dozen movies and countless TV productions, including a series, and has been ripped off by such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, who called it Pellucidar, and imagined that the Earth was hollow and there was another world on the inside surface. (You didn't ask, but yes, I own a copy of Tarzan at the Earth's Core with the original dust jacket.) In this version, Brendan Fraser stars as a geologist named Trevor, who defends the memory of his late brother, Max, who believed the center of the Earth could be reached through "volcanic tubes." Max disappeared on a mysterious expedition, which, if it involved volcanic tubes, should have been no surprise to him. Now Trevor has been asked to spend some time with his nephew, Max's son, who is named Sean (Josh Hutcherson). What with one thing and another, wouldn't you know they find themselves in Iceland, and peering down a volcanic tube. They are joined in this enterprise by Hannah (Anita Briem), who they find living in Max's former research headquarters near the volcano he was investigating. Now begins a series of adventures, in which the operative principle is: No matter how frequently or how far they fall, they will land without injury. They fall very frequently, and very far. The first drop lands them at the bottom of a deep cave, from which they cannot possibly climb, but they remain remarkably optimistic: "There must be a way out of here!" Sure enough, they find an abandoned mine shaft and climb aboard three cars of its miniature railway for a scene that will make you swear the filmmakers must have seen "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Just like in that movie, they hurtle down the tracks at breakneck speeds; they're in three cars, on three more or less parallel tracks, leading you to wonder why three parallel tracks were constructed at great expense and bother, but just when such questions are forming, they have to (1) leap a chasm, (2) jump from one car to another, and (3) crash. It's a funny thing about that little railway: After all these years, it still has lamps hanging over the rails, and the electricity is still on. The problem of lighting an unlit world is solved in the next cave they enter, which is inhabited by cute little birds that glow in the dark. One of them makes friends with Sean, and leads them on to the big attraction -- a world bounded by a great interior sea. This world must be a terrible place to inhabit; it has man-eating and man-strangling plants, its waters harbor giant-fanged fish and fearsome sea snakes that eat them, and on the further shore is a Tyrannosaurus rex. So do the characters despair? Would you despair, if you were trapped miles below the surface in a cave and being chased by its hungry inhabitants? Of course not. There isn't a moment in the movie when anyone seems frightened, not even during a fall straight down for thousands of feet, during which they link hands like sky-divers and carry on a conversation. Trevor gets the ball rolling: "We're still falling!" I mentioned 3-D glasses earlier in the review. Yes, the movie is available in 3-D in "selected theaters." Select those theaters to avoid. With a few exceptions (such as the authentic IMAX process), 3-D remains underwhelming to me -- a distraction, a disappointment and more often than not offering a dingy picture. I guess setting your story inside the Earth is one way to explain why it always seems to need more lighting. The movie is being shown in 2-D in most theaters, and that's how I wish I had seen it. Since there's that part of me with a certain weakness for movies like this, it's possible I would have liked it more. It would have looked brighter and clearer, and the photography wouldn't have been cluttered up with all the leaping and gnashing of teeth. Then I could have appreciated the work of the plucky actors, who do a lot of things right in this movie, of which the most heroic is keeping a straight face. 1
《七宗罪》影评 古典主义的行为艺术 是一部关于宗教的电影，七宗罪，顾名思义，在宗教中，是属于人类恶行的分类，天主教教义分辨出教徒常遇到的重大恶行”，这些恶行最初是由受过希腊神学及哲学的沙漠隐修士埃瓦格里乌斯·庞帝古斯定义出八种损害个人灵性的恶行，分别是贪食、色欲、贪婪、悲叹、暴怒、懒惰、自负及傲慢。庞义伐观察到当时的人们逐渐变得自我中心，尤以傲慢为甚。这也成为电影的一大线索。 “暴食”、“贪婪”、“懒惰”、“嫉妒”、“骄傲”、“淫欲”、“愤怒”，这是天主教教义所指的人性七宗罪。城市中发生的连坏杀人案，死者恰好都是犯有这些教义的人。凶手故弄玄虚的作案手法，令资深冷静的警员沙摩塞和血气方刚的新扎警员米尔斯都陷入了破案的谜团中。他们去图书馆研读但丁的《神曲》，企图从人间地狱的描绘中找到线索，最后从宗教文学哲学的世界中找到了凶手作案计划和手段的蛛丝马迹。凶手前来投案自首，这令众人都松了一口气，以为案件就此结束，怎料还是逃不出七宗罪的杀人逻辑， 威廉是纽约警察局的刑事警官，也是个凶杀案专家，他当了32年的警察，多年来几乎每一分钟都在辛劳地工作，他也看到和感受到了太多的不幸，他觉得疲惫极了，幸好现在还有7天他就要退休了，终于可以享享清福了。为了接替他的工作，上司又给他派了一个新搭档——年轻气盛的米尔斯，他是和妻子翠西一同搬到纽约来的，起初翠西并不同意来这座繁乱的城市，但米尔斯认为只有这里才能让他接手一些重要的案子，于是在他的百般劝说下，翠西才同意了。威廉作风严谨，办事老成，米尔斯则有些冲动，心高气傲的他对威廉办案的方式很不以为然。 也许是冥冥之中已经注定了的，米尔斯的第一个案子正是威廉的最后一个案子：一个胖得出奇的男人在家中被杀了。可是在现场，米尔斯和威廉却没有发现什么线索。紧接着另一起案子发生了，一位富有的辩护律师格特被杀害，在凶案现场的地板上，凶手用血写着两个字：贪婪。细心的威廉重新回到前一个案发现场，不露掉每一个蛛丝马迹，终于在冰箱后面发现了两个字：暴食。这时他们才醒悟到原来他是被强迫吃下大量的东西直到胃被撑破而死的。威廉猛想到了《失乐园》中的语句──基督教的七重罪孽：暴食、贪婪、懒惰、愤怒、骄傲、淫欲和嫉妒。他认为接下来还会发生5个谋杀案，分别与其他的诫条可怕地联系起来，可米尔斯却并不相信。 翠西邀请威廉来家中吃饭。米尔斯有些不高兴，但翠西却和威廉谈得很愉快。在现场发现的指纹使格特的当事人毒贩维克多成了怀疑对象。他有前科，而且有心理疾病。但当警察赶去拘捕他时，却发现他早已经死了，在墙上写着“懒惰”二字。通过图书馆内部的调查资料，威廉终于把目标锁定为记者约翰·多伊，一个为了不留下自己的指纹而将手指上的皮剥掉的变态者。但当威廉和米尔斯前去寻
Seven(七宗罪)1995 David Fincher's classic tale of inventive serial killing and urban degredation, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman on excellent form Who'd have thought? An absurd-sounding tale of a serial killer basing his crimes around the seven deadly sins, directed by the man behind the mess that was Alien3, turning out to be one of the most chilling and original thrillers of the 1990s. From the outset, through the film's brilliantly designed deliberate under-lighting - we see very little blood and guts - and muffled sound, the audience is encouraged to lean towards the screen, immerse itself in the film's unbearably grim world. Pitt is in career-making form as Mills, a simple cop moving with his sweet young wife (Paltrow) to a grim, anonymous city, determined to make a difference, to do some good. He is assigned to track down a vengeful killer, and works alongside Somerset (Freeman), a jaded, wise policeman on the verge of retirement. The two are that modern movie cliché -the mismatched pair thrown together by circumstance, who gradually learn mutual respect. But Fincher and Walker take these hackneyed ingredients, play with them in the context of a brilliantly cohesive plot, and present something consistently fresh - the police finding themselves with too much evidence, the premature unmasking of the killer - and very, very dark. 1
老：Get out of the van! 从车里出来！ Out ! 出来！ 递：Jesus Christ, man. Don’t shoot me. 天哪，老兄。不要开枪。 老：Step away. 离车远点。 Turn around. Put your hands on your head. 转过去，手抱头。 （飞：What the hell is going on? 到底发生了什么？） 老：Why and what are you doing here? 你为什么来这里？ 递：I’m delivering a package man. 我只是送快递而已。 I got a package for this guy, David. 我有个快递要送给戴维。 Detective... 警探 David Mills. 戴维?米尔斯 老：Get it. Slowly. 拿过来。慢一点。 （飞：He’s opening the back of van. 他正在打开火车的后备箱。 We’ve got him in sight. 我们瞄准他了。） 递：This guy paid me ﹩500 to bing it out here, man. 有人出500块让我把它带过来。 He said he wanted it here at exactly 7 o’clock. 他让我在7点钟准时送到。 老：Put it down. 放下来。 We got a box 我们有个盒子。 （飞：We got a box . Call the bomb squad. 有一个盒子，快找拆弹组。 Bomb squad . We got a box . 拆弹组，我们这有个盒子。） 老：Face the van. 面朝货车。 Hands up. 举起手来。 Turn around . 转过来。 Okay. Go. 好的，快走。 Off you go. Go . 快离开这里。快。 I’m sending the driver out on foot . 我让司机跑着离开了。 （飞：He’s headed north, along the road. 他沿着路往北跑了。） 老：Have him picked up . 找人去接他。 Oh, I don’t know . 我不知道。 I’m going to open it. 我要打开它了。 罪：When i said i admire you , i meant what i said . 我说过我很佩服你，我是说真的。——打开箱子—— 老：It’s blood . 是血。 罪：You’ve made quite a life for yourself, Detective. 你有着美满幸福的生活，警探。 You should be very proud. 你应该很自豪。 轻：Shut the fuck up , you piece of shit . 闭上你的狗嘴，混蛋。 老：California, stay away from here . 加州号，不要靠近。 Stay away from here , now . Don’t, don’t , don’t come in here . 离这里远点，不要过来，不要。
《七宗罪》电影赏析 姓名： 班级： 学号：
七宗罪影视赏析 看完《七宗罪》，想到的是大卫〃芬奇的另一部电影《天生杀人狂》，还有北武野出演的《大逃杀1》，或许还有些别的，像《沉默的羔羊》之类的影片。他们讲的故事，本身大都虚构离奇又残暴，影片的结局也颇有些出其不意的“尽如人意”或“不尽如人意”。无论这些“出其不意”是导演刻意为了让观众记住这遗憾的影片，还是出于剧本内容本质的需要。首先能看到的，就是在影片片头开始，鲜明的影片分级级别。 很多时候，社会的病态、人性的病态、更多“背后的东西”，温吞的表现方式是不足以引起警戒，反倒是血腥、残暴、惊悚、变态的不合理的表现方式，如同硬生生从活人身上扯下一块皮肉的痛，更容易让人深切记忆并沉静反思。 而这样的表现主题和表达方式，必是需要一个更为宽阔的胸怀，才可被容忍、默许、接纳、认可。 “人民的承受能力，远比统治者想象的要强大”。而统治者，却沉浸在自己的认识中，逶迤不前。 《七宗罪》结束时斯班瑟说“海明威说：这个世界如此美好，值得人们为它奋斗。 七宗罪——暴食、贪婪、懒惰、淫欲、骄傲、嫉妒和愤怒——被天主教认为是遭永劫的七种大罪。 影片《七宗罪》以浑暗为大背景描述了在一个多雨城市的犯罪故事：威廉是纽约警察局的刑事警官，也是个凶杀案专家，他当了３
２年的警察，多年来几乎每一分钟都在辛劳地工作，他也看到和感受到了太多的不幸，他觉得疲惫极了，幸好现在还有７天他就要退休了，终于可以享享清福了。 为了接替他的工作，上司又给他派了一个新搭档——年轻气盛的米尔斯，他是和妻子翠西一同搬到纽约来的，起初翠西并不同意来这座繁乱的城市，但米尔斯认为只有这里才能让他接手一些重要的案子，于是在他的百般劝说下，翠西才同意了。威廉作风严谨，办事老成，米尔斯则有些冲动，心高气傲的他对威廉办案的方式很不以为然。 也许是冥冥之中已经注定了的，米尔斯的第一个案子正是威廉的最后一个案子——一个胖得出奇的男人在家中被杀了，可是在现场，米尔斯和威廉却没有发现什么线索。 紧接着另一起案子发生了，一位富有的辩护律师格特被杀害，在凶案现场的地板上，凶手用血写着两个字：贪婪。细心的威廉重新回到前一个案发现场，不露掉每一个蛛丝马迹，终于在冰箱后面发现了两个字：暴食。这时他们才醒悟到原来他是被强迫吃下大量的东西直到胃被撑破而死的。 威廉猛想到了《失乐园》中的语句──基督教的七重罪孽：暴食、贪婪、懒惰、愤怒、骄傲、淫欲和嫉妒。他认为接下来还会发生５个谋杀案，分别与其他的诫条可怕地联系起来，可米尔斯却并不相信。 翠西邀请威廉来家中吃饭。米尔斯有些不高兴，但翠西却和威廉谈得很愉快。 在现场发现的指纹使格特的当事人毒贩维克多成了怀疑对象。他
《七宗罪》电影表现艺术赏析 环艺设计1401班吴雪松感悟： 本部影片被认定为心理惊悚片，我觉得更像是一部发人深省的警世录。导演通过布置玄疑的情节，导引观众一步步走向最终目的――用心认识这七宗大罪。 影片看到多一半的时候，还觉得是在浪费自己的时间，没有半点收获。直到John Doe出现，让我们真正接触到那个人，被David认为是撒旦是恶魔那个人，没有令人恐怖的外表，凶恶的表情，而是锐利的眼神，冷静的头脑，缜密的思维。这样睿智的一个人，联想他做过的一切，却令人不寒而栗。 约翰：“一个死胖子，胖到自己不能站立，你若在街上看到他将与朋友一起嘲笑他，你若在餐厅遇见他，他将使你食难下咽……一个律师——你们应该为我的作为而暗暗庆贺——穷其一生都在通过欺骗的手段赚黑心钱！一个女人，竟然无法忍受外表美丽的丧失，足见内心的丑陋！一个毒贩，一个鸡奸犯——事实上，还有带菌的妓女……在这
个令人作呕的世界上，你怎能称他们‘无辜’？你怎能对此无动于衷？” 给我们震撼的一段话，对于这个社会，我们已经习惯了这七种“原罪”，开始去思考何谓有罪，何谓无罪？在这个社会上我们只是按既定的规则玩牌，并一代接一代的传承，法律在张显着它的作用，保护该保护的，惩罚该惩罚的。我们也在法律的树荫下进行着自己的生活，习惯着冷漠，群居动物之间少有的冷漠。“原罪”已经被忘记了，用哲学的话说，是意识形态里的既定的得到肯定和默认的思维。 电影没有同它的落幕而结束，它激起了每一个人的“原罪”意识，令我们看完不禁胆战心惊，没错！别再怀疑，你我都有罪！ 七宗罪这部电影从一个新颖的角度深刻的反应了道德沦丧等的社会问题。通过犯罪者的所犯罪孽和警察也同样是七宗罪的罪人之一的剧情设定，使剧情更加完整。同时也塑造了一个犯罪者的反面形象。
Tess(苔丝)1979 Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which Roman Polanski has turned into a lovely, lyrical, unexpectedly delicate movie, might at first seem to be the wrong project for Mr. Polanski in every way. As a new biography of the director reports, when Tess was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the press pointed nastily and repeatedly to the coincidence of Mr. Polanski's having made a film about a young girl's seduction by an older man, while he himself faced criminal charges for a similar offense. This would certainly seem to cast a pall over the project. So would the fact that Hardy's novel is so very deeply rooted in English landscapes, geographical and sociological, while Mr. Polanski was brought up in Poland. Finally, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is so quintessentially Victorian a story that a believable version might seem well out of any contemporary director's reach. But if an elegant, plausible, affecting Tess sounds like more than might have been expected of Mr. Polanski, let's just say he has achieved the impossible. In fact, in the process of adapting his style to suit such a sweeping and vivid novel, he has achieved something very unlike his other work. Without Mr. Polanski's name in the credits, this lush and scenic Tess could even be mistaken for the work of David Lean. In a preface to the later editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Mr. Hardy described the work as "an impression, not an argument." Mr. Polanski has taken a similar approach, removing the sting from both the story's morality and its melodrama. Tess Durbeyfield, the hearty country lass whose downfall begins when her father learns he had noble forebears, is sent to charm her rich D'Urberville relations. She learns that they aren't D'Urbervilles after all; instead, they have used their new money to purchase an old name. Tess charms them anyhow, so much that Alec D'Urberville, her imposter cousin, seduces and impregnates her. The seduction, like many of the film's key scenes, is presented in a manner both earthy and discreet. In this case, the action is set in a forest, where a gentle mist arises from the ground and envelops Tess just around the time when she is enveloped by Alec. Alec, as played by Leigh Lawson, is a slightly wooden character, unlike Angel Clare, Tess's later and truer lover, played with supreme radiance by Peter Firth. Long after Tess has borne and buried her illegitimate child, she finds and falls in love with this spirited soul mate. But when she marries Angel Clare and is at last ready to reveal the secret of her past, the story begins hurtling toward its final tragedy. When Tess becomes a murderer, the film offers its one distinctly Polanski-like moment—but even that scene has its fidelity to the novel. A housemaid listening at a door hears a "drip, drip, drip" sound, according to Hardy. Mr. Polanski has simply interpreted this with a typically mischievous flourish. Of all the unlikely strong points of Tess, which opens today for a weeklong engagement at the Baronet and which will reopen next year, the unlikeliest is Nastassja Kinski, who plays the title role. Miss Kinski powerfully resembles the young Ingrid Bergman, and she is altogether ravishing. But she's an odd choice for Tess: not quite vigorous enough, and maybe even too beautiful. She's an actress who can lose her magnetism and mystery if she's given a great deal to do (that was the case in an earlier film called Stay As You Are). But here, Mr. Polanski makes perfect use of her. Instead of a driving force, she becomes an echo of the land and the society around her, more passive than Hardy's Tess but linked just as unmistakably with natural forces. Miss Kinski's Tess has no inner life to speak of. But Mr. Polanski makes her surroundings so expressive that her placidity and reserve work very beautifully. Even at its nearly three-hour running time, Mr. Polanski's Tess cannot hope for anything approaching the range of the novel. But the deletions have been made wisely, and though the story loses some of its resonance it maintains its momentum. There are episodes—like one involving Tess's shabby boots and Mercy Chant, the more respectable girl who expects to marry Angel—that don't make the sense they should, and the action is fragmented at times. That's a small price to pay for the movie's essential rightness, for its congruence with the mood and manner of the novel. Mr. Polanski had to go to Normandy and rebuild Stonehenge to stage his last scene, according to this same biography. As is the case throughout his Tess, the results were worth the trouble. 1
《七宗罪》赏析 《七宗罪》无论是从背景、主题、风格，还是从故事结构、镜头设计、画面构图、灯光色彩上来说，都有很多值得赏析的东西。下面我从故事结构、镜头设计、灯光色彩上来谈一谈我的浅见。 一、故事结构。 电影的开头是一个下着雨的早晨,年轻警官米尔斯起床，穿衣，准备去上班。这里的片段全部是用近景拍摄,突出人物和人物动作。 在米尔斯和他妻子吻别的时候，不知道为什么，我突然有点不太好的预感。也许是因为在看电影之前听人说这部片子的每个场景都有深刻寓意，值得好好推敲。所以会下意识地想导演刻画这么温馨的一幕有什么别的涵义。果不其然，这一开场的场面调度为结局做了很好的感情铺垫，让人觉得头尾贯连，事出有因。 接着音乐响起,迎来了这个连环杀人案件中第一个案件。在故事情节上，作者浓彩重墨的的给我们展现了这个部分。接下来的几个案子相对来说就省略一些。这种张弛有度的情节设计使影片更加有节奏感。 在结局部分，导演把场景安排在一个荒芜人烟的原野里。和之前狭隘拥挤的室内犯罪现场想比，这样的场景虽然不会给人带来窒息感，却产生另一种由神秘未知带来的紧张感。 让观众希望的美好结局出现反转，这是很多电影为了被人们记住而使用的有效手段之一。于是，年轻警察米尔斯的妻子翠西死了。于是，性感迷人的他因为爱妻犯了罪，成为了杀人凶手完美计划的执行者，让很多人深感遗憾。 在这个部分，年轻警官妻子的人头镜头特写只是很短暂的一瞬。看见警官愤怒痛苦的表情镜头时，我会不由自主地想起之前他和爱妻吻别的第一个场景。正是因为有了之前那样温馨一幕的铺垫，此时对他不可抑制的痛苦，我们更能直观地感同身受，理解他对凶手开枪的冲动。如果没有之前的镜头，我们可能觉得这个情节有点儿突兀抽象，只是在理性上理解，感观上的理解并不那么强烈充分。 这个结局虽然不太符合喜欢大团圆结局的人的口味，但比较一下各种可能的结局之后，就会忍不住再次为编剧的情节设计拍手叫好。 二、镜头设计。 在第一个案件中，镜头先是用近景在外面跟着两位警察走，等到两位警察走
The Pursuit of Happiness（当幸福来敲门）2006 With a title like The Pursuit of Happiness, you expect the characters to get to the promised land. They do, but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in one. This is not the feel-good movie of the season unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happiness is a chore. Downbeat movies aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived circumstances. How is it that movies "inspired by a real story" often feel more fake than those fully embedded in the realm of fiction? Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy whose rags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me away. In and of itself, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it wouldn't surprise me if the movie's prestige factor and Smith's popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star, Thandie Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face into unpleasant expressions. Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his occasional deficiencies are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's direction, but there's not much personality behind the cute features and curly hair. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his self-employed business of selling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the disposition of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns into a country song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a friend over $14. He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But there's a bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no chance to get in until he amazes the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab. It's a blessing that the movie doesn't use a stock villain to impede Chris' herky-jerky trip to the top, because that would have tipped the movie into the empire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a strong conflict makes the two-hour running length seem very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in the way of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a real-life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how desperately Chris loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher seems like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do. The film's most compelling scenes are those that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure these salesmen are under and how important the contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, these sequences are background noise. They are neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training. The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams. Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promises a better story than the one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbose) voiceover that adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't need Will Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'" This is the English-language debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himself in Italian cinema. The Pursuit of Happiness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a director raised outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an asset in some circumstances is a detriment in this one. The Pursuit of Happiness isn't enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting misery. The Pursuit of Happiness is competently made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it loses the pursuit and misses the "happiness."