Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Phil Allocco, ‘5lbs of Pressure‘ is about Adam, who returns to his town after a full 16 years of prison and parole. Hoping to turn over a new leaf, he picks up a new job, lives modestly, and begins working on his substance addiction. However, there are still too many challenges to overcome when it comes to reuniting with his estranged family, and while some of them are tangible, most of them stem from the mind. A big mystery that runs throughout this crime drama movie is the question of why he was arrested and sentenced in the first place. While we are given a vague idea throughout, the truth turns out to be far more multifaceted than one can expect. Adam, as it turns out, wasn’t always a gentle giant, and the sins of his past seem to have found a way to trickle into his present. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Adam Was Behind Bars For Killing Eli’s Brother, Seemingly in a Fit of Blind Rage
‘5lbs of Pressure’ doesn’t give an easy answer as to the exact events that led to Adam’s 13 years in prison, but we know that his killing Eli’s brother is what started it all. Over the course of multiple clues and recountings sprinkled throughout the movie, we are able to piece together a timeline of this murder, but it still leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. The most explicit clarification comes from Adam himself as he explains his nearly two decades of absence to his son. 16 years ago, Adam and his friend, Steve, were hanging out in town when Steve started hitting on a girl. When her partner came to object, things soon escalated into a full-blown fight, with the partner and his friends beating up both Steve and Adam.
Though Adam came out relatively alright from the incident, Steve was severely injured, and this seemingly angered Adam to the point of taking his father’s gun. In his recounting, Adam claims that his intention was to just instill some fear into the minds of the man and his friends, but that changed when they came face to face. Notably, Adam tells Jimmy that the man charged at him first, and in that moment, all he could feel was a murderous rage, and he blindly pulled the trigger. Not long after that, he was arrested and found guilty of manslaughter. After 13 years behind bars, he was put on parole for another 3 years, and only at the tail end of that period was he allowed to return home, where the story merges with the present.
Eli’s Recollection of the Day Points Towards Adam Being an Unreliable Narrator
While Adam, in his retelling of the past, doesn’t attempt to shift the blame away from himself much, the movie puts some doubt into our heads by presenting a conflicting perspective. In one of Eli’s mental breakdown sequences, we get his first-person perspective of that fateful day. As it turns out, Eli and his brother were playing catch when Adam stormed into the neighborhood with a gun clearly in his hand. Though Eli’s brother rushed to the spot, he was far from being prepared to attack when Adam shot and killed him.
This raises the possibility that Adam’s version of the story is partially untrue, and possibly an attempt to alleviate some blame in front of Jimmy. And yet, at the same time, the first-person shot is also from the eyes of a traumatized child, who may not remember his brother’s actions in a darker light. What we have, then, are slightly divergent recollections, both of which appear to have been warped due to personal stakes. That said, the fact that Adam was found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder suggests that he might have used that same line of argument in court, and regardless of its truth, this might be one of the many reasons Eli hates him.
It’s likely that Eli’s brother was not just moving towards Adam that day, but also away from his own brother, to keep him from harm’s way. This left Eli with a survivor’s guilt so potent that it still affects his psyche. Faced with these revelations, the entire movie, and especially the ending, is recontextualized. While Adam may be in repentance for everything he’s done wrong in the past, it still possibly comes from a place of insincerity. We also see his angry self flash back into the surface when he is talking to Donna, which, along with Eli’s arc, illustrates just how difficult it can be to move on from the past and stop it from bleeding into the present.
Read More: Is 5lbs of Pressure a True Story? Is Adam Based on a Real Ex-Convict?
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