Shoup Airlines

Se7en

No one said I had to review current movies.

This is definitely not a first date movie. More like a third date movie.

Seven was a 1995 release directed by David Fincher. You may remember him from helming other fine films such as The Game and Fight Club. He also directed the recently released Zodiac, but I haven’t seen that one yet so I can’t label it as fine yet.

The film is a modern day noir that shines a grimy, flickering light bulb into the dark corners of a society paying no heed to its downfall and the ever present battle between those resigned to accept that fate and those that hope to change it…somehow. Whew, what a sentence!

Morgan Freeman plays the world weary detective who has given up, planning to retire in seven days and “run away” to the countryside when he is handed a gruesome death that may or may not be a homicide. At the same time, Freeman is partnered with his just transferred replacement played by a young, brash Brad Pitt that hasn’t quite shaken off that rookie label but still wants to take on the world because he knows he can change it.

The characters immediately clash as their investigation quickly turns into a homicide and then into a serial killing that leads to other murders, each representing one of the seven deadly sins. Somerset (Freeman) knows this is the work of someone methodical and highly intelligent, where Mills (Pitt) immediately condemns the killer as an insane psychopath. Both are essentially right, but that doesn’t mean they won’t lock horns as the story unfolds.

Fincher draws you in with the psychology and darkness of the murders while flawlessly reverberating the chilling feel with a poorly lit and smeared metropolis where it is always raining until, with intended irony, the final climactic day. Fincher also leaves the metropolis nameless and unidentifiable allowing the viewer to easily associate it with their own.

Kevin Spacey then takes the unidentifiable label one step further, playing the murderer with a look and face that could be the guy sitting next to you at the bar or the crosswalk guard that waves to your children on the way home from school. Aptly named Jonathon Doe, he feels knows he can make the society take notice not just with the symbolic killings and media frenzy that is inevitably following, but by involving both detectives in his calculated plan to bring everything full circle.

The story remains simple with only two main characters for the majority of the film until Spacey is introduced. Morgan Freeman will forever play the worldly and educated grandfatherly type and does much the same here, but he is so damn convincing that you never notice. I think simply because Somerset is so worn down and beaten by the job it adds just enough depth to not see the same character Freeman has always played. As for Pitt, this was his first movie, I feel, where he finally demonstrated that he was more than just the next People’s Sexiest Man Alive. I don’t care what you women say about A River Runs Through It or Legends of the Fall. It would also forge the friendship with Fincher that would lead to Fight Club and the upcoming Benjamin Buttons project. Then there is Kevin Spacey. Hang on a second while I wipe up the drool. He essentially introduced himself to the world as Verbal Kint and then less than a month later as Jonathon Doe. If you have to IMDb that first one, you’re dead to me. Man crushing aside, I can’t think of anyone else that could have portrayed the needed systematic calculation and detached clarity that he brought to the role.  And Spacey only had the last twenty minutes of the film to do it in!  Do you really need any more convincing?  Hollywood didn’t.  They gave him the Best Supporting Oscar for that Kint character you’re still searching.

Yes, this film is dark, in both the literal and non literal sense, but nowhere near the extent to which many torture porn flics will get in your face these days. Although a very strong case could be made for how much Seven influenced the likes of Saw, Hostel and their ilk. The difference being that Seven is the college junior that will actually make you think when looking at the seedy underbelly of humanity while Hostel, the high school senior, attempts to emulate out of coolness without really getting it.

It may not be obvious but I like this film.