Se7en

Seldom does a film elucidate the culpability of our culture,of our society, in the mayhem and madness we often find in everyday life. According to Se7en, our culture is drifting through darkness. The mouthpiece for this thematic undercurrent is Somerset, a literate man who also happens to be a detective, a man who can read a clue ("This isn't going to be a happy ending") or Dante's Inferno with equal aplomb. He even provides the film's final thematic statement with a quote from Hemingway. His quirkiness, perhaps the outgrowth of a brilliant mind, is no worse than that of any prophet or seer of old, those harbingers of Biblical insight whom others always find kooky and offbeat. He is not well loved for his cynical, pessimistic outlook (such that his consuming motivation is to retire and get out of town). However, by the end it becomes clear that it is Somerset who sees our dark world with the prophet's particular clarity. (It is left to his partner Mills to find this out the hard way).

Working on us to reinforce this world as Somerset sees it is the film's astounding mise-en-scene, a disturbing film-noir setting developed by director David Fincher and cinematographer Darius Khondji. Flashlights barely illuminate the slimy walls of the roach-infested tenement of one victim and the dark bedroom of another. Rain pours down in buckets. Bird's-eye-view shots of downtown (the city is never named- a generic, everyman's kind of place) show dingy, sooty rooftops and grimy streets. Only the film's closing scene is in bright sunlight, which by then only serves as ironic counterpoint to what we see happening.

This is Somerset's vision; both inhabited and described by him. He finds a surprising fellow traveler in, not his partner, but the elusive killer John Doe. Doe shares the vision and provides an unsettling echo to the rumblings and teachings of Somerset. If one looks at life through the Somerset lens, one must admit that John Doe has a valid point. He and Somerset have arrived at the same conclusion, the difference between them being how they have responded. (Somerset longs to escape to some otherworldly realm in the country. Doe has taken action.)

Though gripping and fast moving, this is not an action film. It holds our interest through the workings of horror and mystery: a stark, film-noir detective piece. Except for one tense pursuit through halls and alleys in pouring rain, as well as the bit of ending action, there is surprisingly little violence. We see each murder, save two, after the fact, as a crime scene. This only makes the final act that much more suspenseful.

This is a very tight film. Elements within: dialogue, actions, lighting, setting, all of these tend to reinforce one another to paint a solid picture. It is a perverse logic that makes the final and seventh sin complete perfectly the circle of events begun with the first.

A retiring Detective and a young rookie are hunting down a serial killer, a killer with a dark MO, murdering his victims using the seven deadly sins.

As I watch this, it's coming up to its thirtieth anniversary, and it's as fresh now as it was back in 1995, it's an intensely macabre take, crimes that are infinitely macabre and depraved, and intensely twisted.

The combination of Freeman and Pitt is incredible, they work immensely well together, we have the fresh zest of Mills, and the unshakable, but battle weary Somerset. Paltrow and Spacey are excellent in support.

Two hours flashed past, there is no lull, no moment to switch off and boil the kettle, the intensity is immediate, the pacing designed to keep you glued.

I have always thought there is a shade of Alfred Hitchcock about this movie, such is the intelligence of the plot.

Very good visuals, the macabre and gruesome bodies look shocking still, nothing is spared or hidden away.

10/10.

`Days from retirement' Detective Somerset is teamed with new-to-the-city Detective Mills to investigate a murder that quickly becomes a series. Somerset realises that the killer must be smart and is using classic literature to model his killings on the seven deadly sins, however Mills finds to hard to see him as anything other than a crazy man. With the killer close to completing his work, Mills and Somerset begin to close in on him. However nothing is as it seems in a dark depressing city full of moral degradation and apathy.

When David Fincher came onto the scene with his debut feature Alien3 the world only paused to scorn a film that didn't fit in with the Alien franchise. Yes it wasn't a great film – but I loved the sense of mood, the dark the tension in the shadows that Fincher created. Years later we have Se7en, Fight Club, The Game, and at people are getting Fincher!

Se7en was his major break through – where his dark visions also reaped box-office gold. The story doesn't sound like much – mismatched partners (one young, cocky and reckless – the other a few days from retirement) go after a serial killer who is carrying out a series of twisted murders…..it sounds like Lethal Weapon meets a straight to video thriller. But happily it rises above that by so much it's unbelievable….it certainly shows how a story put in good hands can work out. From the start we are entombed in mood – the city where it always rains, the uncaring people etc. The we begin to find murders – but Fincher doesn't show us the murders, he lets us see the aftermath in the shadows and lets us imagine the rest – Genius!

What you don't see is more gory than what you do. Meanwhile the tension is cranked up to fever pitch as the race to catch the killer is accelerated. When we meet the killer, the film just gets better…right up to an ending that is simply one of the most logical, emotional and gripping endings I've ever seen. I promise you'll leave the cinema shell shocked.

Freeman is excellent as Somerset – so good that it's a role he's tried to do again in `Kiss the girls' etc. But here he is the perfect foil for both Mills and the killer. Brad Pitt is also superb....he isn't allowed to trade on his looks here and does very well in a film that has little opportunity for him to pander to his female fans – he spends a lot of it looking beaten up. Paltrow is OK with what she has – but this isn't really a film that focuses on female roles. R. Lee Ermey is as good as ever and it's a sign of how good the cast is that actors of the stature of Charles Dutton and John C McGinley are basically in roles that barely count as cameos.

However the best performance is from Kevin Spacey in the years before he became an Oscar lovie and stopped doing bad guys or dark characters. He is only on screen for a small portion of the film but his dialogue is superb and he delivers it faultlessly. In the scene where he shares a car ride with Mills and Somerset you literally hang on his every word. However alongside Spacey Fincher stands triumphant with his dark vision given the perfect story and perfect actors.

At heart this is a cop thriller – but excellent performances, excellent mood and a moral lesson from an excellent Spacey make this quite simply the most jaw-droppingly excellent thriller of the 1990's.

Seven's quality puts it so far beyond most of the "cops on trail of deranged killer" genre that it comes out as a true jewel of cinema. Everything about seven is perfect. It is art captured on film. This movie is a bright spot for all of the stars who worked on it.

Brad Pitt never gets the credit he deserves for his acting because he's a pretty boy and the press is a lot more interested about how he and Jennifer are doing. That's a shame because he is a talented actor that isn't afraid to take chances with both the roles that he picks and the characters that he plays. That is quite rare in the A-list world. Morgan Freeman is a great actor. You can always count on him to do what he does best which is play a wise veteran that has seen it all. Kevin Spacey is another great actor that has great range and really puts life and personality into his characters.

The real talent of this movie, excluding the actors that brought it to life, is the director David Fincher and the writer Andrew Kevin Walker. Fincher's talents for making a visually stunning film are now well known and he often brings a dark patina to his work. Andrew Kevin Walker must have some incredible demons living inside him. Either that or one hell of an imagination for bringing the intricate story of Seven and the plan of John Doe to life.

John Doe's plan really is twisted and I won't be spoiling it here. Suffice to say I have never seen so evil and complicated a plan in a movie before or since. The cinematography of the film is dark but beautiful and throughout the film it is either night or raining or both except for two very brief moments. It is such an emotional movie that you can't keep from being caught up in what is happening. Do you understand and sympathize with what John Doe is doing or do you think him a mad killer that must be stopped.

Bottom Line: If you haven't had the opportunity to see Seven yet then you must at least rent it. It is so damn good that I know you will like it. The only reason you wouldn't is because you're just too damn fragile to take something this hardcore.

After his calamitous experience working on his début film Alien 3 (1992), David Fincher took on a small genre picture that, little did he know, would revitalise his career and become one of the greatest films of the 1990's. Se7en appears to begin as your typical detective neo- noir, with the cynical veteran and the naive rookie taking on an elusive serial killer seemed hell-bent on turning the sin against the sinner. But, set in an unnamed and permanently drizzly American city, Se7en is a meditation on evil and a pessimist's depiction on the modern world, climaxing in one of the bravest and most memorable endings in Hollywood history.

Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is on the verge of retirement, where he plans to leave his inner-city life behind him after years of fighting on the side of good. His replacement is the brash Detective Mills (Brad Pitt), an optimistic young recruit eager to learn, who Somerset takes under his wing. Their first homicide investigation involves an obese man who has been fed at gunpoint to the point of causing his stomach to rupture. With Somerset ready to leave the force, Mills takes on his first solo case in the murder of a rich attorney, a man forced to cut a pound of flesh from his own body. The murder scene has the words 'greed' written in blood. Somerset eventually finds the word 'gluttony' etched in grease in the apartment of the first victim, and he becomes convinced the murders are connected, and that the killer is murdering under the guidance of the seven deadly sins.

The genius of Se7en is rooted in the way the movie keeps the audience as clueless as the detectives. Normally in genre pictures such as this, we either know who the killer is and eagerly wait for the investigators to put the pieces together, or we have a line-up of suspects and red herrings to decide from. Here, apart from brief glimpses during a thrilling chase scene, we are devoid of clues. The killer is always one step ahead of Somerset and Mills, alluding to the idea that the mysterious 'John Doe' is indeed having his work guided by a higher power. Of course, he is not, he is merely a man, but this helps gives Se7en dramatic weight, rather than it becoming a nihilistic exercise in cruelty.

When, three-quarters of the movie in, the killer hands himself in, the movie becomes a masterclass in writing, slowly building into one of the greatest climaxes in film. Somerset, a decent man who has devoted his life to the side of good but has had the fight slowly drained out of him, meets his nemesis in John Doe (Kevin Spacey). But as they talk, Doe's reasoning becomes clear and, shockingly, almost sympathetic. "Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore, you have to hit them with a sledgehammer," he says. It's about a world gone to s**t, a view shared by Mills' wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), who talks to Somerset in a diner about allowing a baby to be born into the world after discovering she is pregnant. Cerebral and Gothic, Se7en transcends the genre on so many levels thanks to some bleak yet stylish direction by Fincher, and it still manages to astound after almost 20 years of repeat viewings.

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