7 Lives

Saw this in the cinema and loved it. It defies definition... so I'll try. It's about a soul on the brink of death, being passed from body to body and experiencing other possible existences. (But I could be wrong.)

Performances are understated and true (I especially liked Kate Ashfield's); individual scenes viewed in isolation play like extracts from an intelligent TV drama. However the audience has to quickly abandon any attempt to be bound by pre-conceptions of Genre: this is the ultimate genre-buster! Disconcerting at first, then unexpectedly liberating.

Great performances, engrossing tale. Recommended.

I watched this movie yesterday. Not a bad movie at all.

After the first 10 minutes or so, it catches your attention. In fact, you'll be asking yourself 'what is going on?' throughout most of the movie. It is a little confusing, perhaps watching it a second or a third time would answer a few questions. But I think (and most viewers too) I won't spend more time with, it is worth watching once, not more.

Different characters repeat the same phrases in different occasions, I couldn't help but compare this to 'Cloud Atlas', only in a different (much lower) level. Perhaps this adds some interest to the story, I think this makes it a little more confusing. See for yourself.

Overall, '7 Lives' is not a masterpiece, far from it, but it is watchable - if you have 99 minutes to spend.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Tom (Danny Dyer) is a married man with kids who's been tempted with an offer of a better life by a seductive new client. On his way home, he finds himself accosted by a group of hoodies who chase and mug him, leaving him battered within an inch of his life. As his existence hangs in the balance, he finds himself living out in his head a series of different lives, including one of his assailants, a homeless man, a rock star and a boxer. As crunch time comes on his life, he must choose whether he prefers one of his made up lives or his real one.

Over thirty years ago, despite his powerful, imposing presence in the film Scum, it would probably have been hard for anyone to imagine Ray Winstone, with his working class background and heavy London accent, could have gone on to conquer Hollywood. But he did, and in more recent times, he appeared to have a successor in the shape of Danny Dyer, who burst onto the scene with force in The Football Factory, and also carried WC roots and a heavy London brogue. But, at his current rate, it seems the success Winstone went on to enjoy will continue to elude him, as he makes an ever increasing string of low budget, low grade straight to DVD entries, the latest of which is this ambitious but hopelessly muddled and unsuccessful 'converging tales' piece.

7 Lives has an intriguing concept, but somehow it manages to go off the rails almost as soon as it's begun, with a confused and meandering story that fails to make much sense or relevance in relation to it's central protagonist or to the audience. Dyer himself seems to be feeling the script's weakness and turns in one of his more wooden performances, which when matched with the vocabulary he's asked to read out with his deep London accent, is just asking for trouble. By less than about half way in, it's completely lost your interest and the story just drags on feeling more and more nonsensical and flat as it goes on.

It seems a problem with British actors is their inability to refuse work, and in Dyer's case that seems to be tenfold. One only hopes he lands with an agent that can get him to see sense and separate the wheat from the chaff before it's too late. **

Watched this film last night on love film Not a film to get excited about but worth a watch Seeing this a Danny dyer film straight to DVD like most he produces these days was big fan of his early films human traffic football factory etc and few Recents malice in wounderland I liked pretty much everything else he's done toilet So back to this one for a low budget b movie weren't bad Acting thought was good from each character plot was hard to understand he gets head kicked in changes from the attacked to attacker then from that body to a tramp and so on but never really answered any thing I found entertaining deffo till end but was no classic different role for Mr dyer yes but he a one trick pony who's never going to win many races

Danny Dyer is getting worse by the minute. He was never an Al Pachino or Denzel Washington, but he was in some decent British movies back in the day that suited his personality/accent. Now he is trying act like he can "act" and staring in films with a budget of like £2.50 does not help either.

This film was bad, really bad and half way through I was starting to feel like someone had slipped something into my drink as I had no clue what was going on or where I was. The 3.3 rating it has is ridiculous, it's more like 1.3 and that's only because it gives you a reason to join IMDb and write a review.