Running from poverty, with the smarts to make it

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2006)

First question: if Muccino has moved to Hollywood, who's going to be the mainstream film voice of Italian thirty- (or forty-) somethings now?
This is the true Horatio Alger story set in the early Eighties of a black San Francisco salesman, Chris Gardner (Will Smith). It's focused on a narrow slice of time when Gardner's wife (Thandie Newton) leaves him with their five-year-old son Christopher (Jaden Smith) and he becomes homeless while in an unpaid, highly competitive program to become a broker at Dean, Witter that he's betting can turn his life around. He and his son are pushed from apartment to cheap motel to BART restroom to Glide Memorial Church daily beds till his smarts and drive make him the one intern out of twenty hired. End titles tell us the real Gardner later started his own investment company and just sold out his limited partnership in that company for "millions." When the story begins and throughout most of it Gardner struggles to sell a bunch of bone density scanners he's unwisely bought; they're expensive, irrelevant, and hard to sell to doctors' offices but he's got to sell them to keep afloat at all, even homeless. A running theme is how several of these machines are stolen from him under odd circumstances and he struggles to get them back. This is the part of the voice-over-narrated story he calls "running." Christopher goes to school in Chinatown. Another part of the ever-present San Francisco atmosphere is Gardner's success selling retirement plan investment to Pac Bell execs following his wangling a trip to a Candlestick park box to watch a ball game with a CEO, and frequent BART rides. One night father and son, who have used a station Men's as a "cave" for the night, sleep on a moving BART train.
Emphasis is on Chris's devotion to his son and the son's good humor ("You're a good papa"), Chris's willingness to go to any lengths to succeed and never let rejection get him down. It's a simple enough stuff. Only Muccino's sense of movement and Smith's charisma and positive vibe as an actor pull us through and keep this from being dreary or mediocre; it's got to have that zing but they get the zing. Using Smith's real son in the son role also obviously helps. There is chemistry, but the son isn't a professional cutie either.
Also emphasized and a way this story is realistic is the importance of Chris's brains. He's good at numbers and always has been (as well as with people) and did well in school even though he missed college. He drills his son in basic information and gets a foot into the Dean, Witter program initially by solving the Rubik's Cube in front of a Dean, Witter boss who thinks it's impossible.
Happiness is a misspelling in Chinatown Chris objects to, not some sort of hip-hop gesture. Quite the contrary: this is about making it in the mainstream world. Love it or leave it. If this is a sellout, so be it.
This simple, upbeat movie hardly shows what Muccino or Will Smith can do. The Italian director's early films were original and mainstream in a good sense and have a wonderful momentum to them this hard-driven story doesn't really quite need his talents to convey, though he knows how to do it, of course. How does it feel to be famous in your own country and a freshman director in Hollywood? Another question, along with "Why?" This movie is ably done but lacks the complexity of Muccino's mainstream, but stylistically original work Italian work (he created the mainstream for his generation).
Similarly, this role shows Smith's usual charm and charisma but isn't the kind of rich role (Ali) or edgy one (Six Degrees of Separation) he's capable of and too rarely tackles. Sourpusses might see this as capitalist pap. Okay; but it doesn't lie to us any more than Smith's character does. And he is ruthlessly honest whenever he can be: he can't tell Dean, Witter he's homeless  that wouldn't look good  but he does come in for one interview in shirtsleeves and covered in paint drippings and admits he's just been released from jail waiting for a check to clear for an unpaid parking ticket. Chris Gardner lives on the edge. If any of this is true, it's an amazing story of determination.
It's not often Hollywood acknowledges homelessness in US cities like this, or shows how a struggling person can slide down into it  and what a heroic effort it would take  a miracle, really, to get back out. Happiness has some tears, but it's relatively free of sentimentality. Gardner doesn't have time for that. He's too busy running to stay afloat and making dozens of cold calls, selling. This is a Willy Loman who's straight and successful; who isn't pathetic but awe-inspiring. When he gets hired, he doesn't jump for joy. He's just tired and stunned. "Was this as easy as it looked?" an exec asks. "No, sir, it wasn't," he quietly says. There's truth in this too. Showing that some people are exceptional and beat the odds isn't a lie. It's called a role model. It's called an inspiration. This is a simple movie, but you have to be an ideologue with a somewhat mean spirit to object to it too strongly.