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This movie has done well in the box and it touted as a story of homelessness but it made an impression on me at another level. First was just the relentless pursuit within the character played by Will Smith. He starts off as a salesmen of radiological machines to doctors, and is having financial difficulties and this is putting a strain on his relationship with the mother of his young boy who appears to be around 7 at the time of the events that take place. He is mostly rebuffed as he goes around to various doctors’ offices and hospitals to sell this advanced machine, which gives better views of bone densities than the conventional X-rays. In the meantime, his women is working extended hours in a low profile job and seems to be continually acting towards him in the crises mode over the finances to where this is all he is getting from her side. He is still trying to keep the relationship going. As he goes around selling the medical devices, he is piling up numerous parking tickets which are left unpaid. This later comes back to haunt him. Through a friend, he gets a set up for a job interview for a major stock brokerage firm for an internship of 6 months. In the meantime, his women decides to leave him and take off to New York. For a moment he argues his case but then sizes up the situation and let’s her go but wants to keep their son under his care and watch back in the bay area, and she reluctantly agrees to this and begins to head out in leaving him apparently for good. Her feeling of being overwhelmed by the presenting problems hid any joy in her personality and seemed to have too large a proportion to her personal pysche, to where you wonder if she could have reversed her outlook even if their situation reversed. On the Eve of the job interview, the cops knock on his door, and bring him in for the numerous unpaid parking tickets and he spends the night in jail. His finances are crumbling in every direction and he is in the middle of painting the apartment as part of the deal of staying on for another week when the cops knock on the door. He spends the night in jail, unable to wash the paint off and get a decent suit together in time for his morning interview which he runs to from the jailhouse. Despite these obstacles he tells the truth and aces the interview, giving a foreshadowing of his quick thinking which helped him immensely as time went on. He however finds out that the internship is non- paying, with no guarantee of a job at the end of the 6 months, so he could basically be working for free for 6 months with all his financial overhangs pressing down on him right now. - But he takes the job after first hesitating and then getting further encouragement and just does lesser hours so he can still try to sell medical devices, showing how he could quickly come to terms with situations and make a decision. While he is rushing to work one morning, he gets bounced off a car, and luckily just gets badly bruised but loses his shoe, and just continues on to work with one shoe instead of getting checked out and X-rayed at the hospital. This is particularly sad moment as he calls out to the crowd asking for his shoe as he searches for it on the street, and as his financial troubles seem so overriding that they come into even this frightening moment and you get the impression that things are getting even worse for him and even though he is amidst a well to do working crowd going to work, he seems singled out by fate for misfortune. He carries on and is relentless in his approach to getting on with this internship and giving the maximum effort not only for a day but days, and weeks on end. He continues to tumble financially and gets to the point where he doesn’t even have a place to stay. He leaves off early to get on line for shelter in the afternoon sun at 5 P.M. As he is standing on the line, a bunch of rich kids in a convertible whoop it up as they drive by like they are going to the beach, totally oblivious that right near by is the visible representation of poverty and homelessness. While on the internship, he gets a great lead that might get him a huge account, but is late for this cherished appointment due to a traffic jam and an interruption from his immediate jestering boss and missed him as he went out to a game by the time he got there minutes too late. He later goes on to this big shots house, to apologize for this and the financial big shot takes a liking to him as a buddy and gives him a ride and ticket to the big football game. These scenes showed a nice coming together, yet there was the undercurrent that these two individuals, on an equal plane in terms of hanging out, are facing to vastly different worlds at least for now due to their differing financial positions. This bigwig says to him at the game, just relax and enjoy the game, symbolic of letting go on the pecking order for the afternoon which is so annoyingly evident in so many areas of his life including the internship itself where in terms of money, the interns aren’t even getting a crumb. He also meets other people at the game with big connections who are classy towards him and never question his assets or probe him for credentials and simply don’t know what he is going through. In the meantime, he is still selling the medical machines, but as he is demonstrating one to a doctor who was just about to buy, the machine doesn’t start up. Later we find it had just had an 8 dollar part go bad. But the doctor exhibits class and concern for his predicament, and says he will still be buying and to bring it around again. This showed that some of his real opportunities weren’t just a façade and did have some aspect to it that was based on more than frenzied in the moment chances that could fizzle up right then and there just as quickly as they appeared. It is true that behind all his pursuits, could have been deceit and a case of just barking up the wrong tree, but there was enough positive out there for him to eventually find, encounter and work with to everyone’s advantage. Later when he does make the sale and gets the commission, he speaks of the money as oxygen for 6 months. What I really liked about this movie was the no give up attitude portrayed in Will Smith’s character despite his ongoing setbacks both smaller and larger, and it worked at the level of a portrait. This was a portrait of someone who could get knocked off the horse time and time again and still keep going and not let the blows become too deep that they would keep him from moving. The second big impression was how this movie portrayed relationships in the business world. It gave different characterizations, included a somewhat negative one of his immediate boss at the brokerage firm who continually used his standing in the firm as a point of separation as if he was someone better. But many of the other people he encountered had class, sensitivity and didn’t come across to him as acting better than him or being condescending towards him because of their higher position in the business world. With all the negative portrayals out there of business people partly because of the big scandals, this movie had some positive ones of the boys club, that there are business people out there that see their fellows and cohorts in a positive light. Although the pursuit in this case was about finances, this film could relate to any pursuit where obstacles are encountered and how these obstacles could be just unfortunate blocks towards something which is actually doable and obtainable and how right next to the obstacles can be great opportunities if one doesn’t feel run out of town and get so knocked down by what has gone wrong. And I think that psychologically, this movie shows that obstacles might not be a matter of something that needs to always be something you have to breakthrough, like some ship in the artic needing to break through the ice, but obstacles might be standing side by side with the opportunity and you might be dancing with both at the same time as he was in the job interview for example and in any number of his other meetings. Another idea from this movie also is that the opportunities seemed to linger as well as the obstacles, which is also interesting. We usually think of the obstacles as lingering and the opportunties are only there to be grabbed at in that lucky moment, but in this movie, his opportunities seem to linger as well as all the haze of his troubles. The way this movie is crafted, the obstacles and opportunities are often side by side and right in the same scene which is interesting. In one case, the head boss is running late and asks him for 5 dollars. As he looks in his wallet at his last bill of greater than a dollar, he hesitates and then gives the 5, and this moment, first scene by him as another in a long line of obstacles, was actually an opportunity he hesitated at first to take. At lot of the performances in the movie, were excellent including that of his on screen and real life son, who mirrors back to him his own predicament in his own cast off reaction when he tells him he can’t play basketball because it will not lead to anything. The sideline acting and the touches around the scenes were excellent and this movie carries with it some uniqueness that also makes it worth the visit.
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