Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

grjt I rarely give a movie a 10. In fact, this is the first review I have written for IMDB. I just happened to land on this for Netflix. And I am touched. To my soul. This movie has reminded me what it is to be human. That what we should do good for others even when it is difficult. And that it takes time to learn if someone is good.

dansview It's very slow, super sentimental, to the point of annoyance, and hides the surprise until the very end. But there are enough teaser flashbacks to give you the general idea of what's going on. I kept my guard up to be ready for a Left Wing political message about the need for socialized medicine. Yet it shows that taxes can overly burden people. So perhaps I was just being paranoid, based on past experience, or the fact that it was Will Smith.I always demand character development. Our guy seemed to be an upscale professional with a nice girlfriend in his previous life, and we hear where he grew up and went to school. We also see a caring and concerned brother.But we never hear whether he had been religious or a passionate secular humanist, or if he had served in the military, etc. Had he been an idealistic person, a lover of humanity, someone with a powerful moral conscience, or did he become more like this after certain spoiler events?Meanwhile, one nice byproduct of the slowness, is that we do get a little character development for the primary supporting characters. Rosario Dawson, who started her career in a most bizarre fashion. (Do the research), actually gave a perfect performance. We felt her pain without being slammed over the head. Her needs were truly human. To engage in meaningful work and find love.Smith's role was a challenge. There's always the danger of him using his mass appeal to manipulate our emotions beyond what is called for. He walks that tightrope pretty skillfully this time. Because carrying the burden that he has will make anyone a depressing character, but this guy continues to have smiling moments and doesn't burden too many people with his story or his guilt. There is some music-manipulation, but it could have been worse. Some reviewers are quite upset about our character's choice for redemption. They say the film glorifies it. But perhaps not. His choice is not for everyone, or even recommended. But for this particular guy, it was what he wanted. Yes it was selfish in terms of how it might affect his brother and friends. But he is neither a husband or father, and we don't see any parents. He already did some good professional work, and fell in love at least twice. Now he's ready to move on. Had he waiting until he was an old man, his donations would have been unusable.

Alexey Ledwith The concept is interesting, but the film lacks emotional complexity. Not terrible, but they missed a good opportunity for a beautiful film ultimately about love. With the exception of Rosario Dawson, the film doesn't have characters with enough depth for the audience to genuinely care about the final outcome of the movie. Will Smith is capable of amazing work, and he has several nice delicate scenes of rage and sadness, but overall is feels like a performance that was Oscar bait. For a movie about grief, love and redemption, there are too many surface level emotions created by an extremely talented group of actors. The director needed to pull more out of his actors for this ending to be worth the journey. Without that emotional depth, the end of the movie almost seems misplaced and unnatural to the rest of the tone throughout, like it's trying too hard to make you feel something instead of actually feeling something.

vincentlynch-moonoi Let me begin by telling you what's remarkably bad about this film: I don't like being kept in the dark about what's happening in a plot line, and this film is guilty of doing that for a very long portion of the movie. So long, in fact, that I paused the film and went to see Wikipedia's plot synopsis. A number of professional reviewers had the same criticism. It is, in my view, the reason this film gets low ratings from many people and reviewers. No, a director doesn't need to lay everything out for the viewer from the beginning, but we need enough information to feel attached to the film.I know that some will dislike the film because of the suicide angle. That doesn't bother me. It's telling a story, not advocating a position.On the positive side, this is one more example (and there are several others) that demonstrate just how good an actor Will Smith is. In the days of "Fresh Prince", I never thought I'd be saying that. But he's a darned good actor, and this is a more serious film for him than some of the more common big box office films he has been in.The film is depressing. Get ready for that.Also of note here is the performance of Rosario Dawson. Excellent portrayal of a young heart victim, and what would have been the love interest if...I'm glad I watched it, but it's too depressing to watch a second time. The sole reason for watching it, in my view, is to enjoy the dramatic performances by Will Smith and Rosario Dawson.