Se7en

August 15th, 2010 |

Author: Shane

This is one of those dark movies, where it’s continuously raining and wet and where the light always seems to be soft. May be you hate dark movies. But perhaps it is suitable in this case, because Seven attempts to be a statement about humankind: no one is without failing.

The seven deadly sins are excess, voracity, idleness, arrogance, yearn, greed, and anger. Major examples of people committing these are being penalized one by one, cruelly and professionally, by a psychopathic killer. Detectives, and unwilling partners, William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and David Mills (Brad Pitt) are assigned to track down the killer. Needless to say, the job gets skilled. While some might disagree it is done astonishingly, I’d argue otherwise.

For once, I wasn’t impressed with Pitt’s acting. I thought Freeman did a huge job. As usual, the villain, John Doe played by Kevin Spacey, gives a frightening performance, even though he is not given as much center stage as, say, Anthony Hopkins was in Silence of the Lambs. In fact, the whole movie appears to hurry through without giving key characters enough time to build up their emotional worth, particularly Mills’ wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow).

In the end, Seven does handle to get its point across successfully. While watching the movie itself, I thought it a bit anti-climatic, but when considering it over later, the images resonance very strongly in my mind. One of the most alarming films I’ve seen.