Seven Just about every frame of David Fincher's grim 1995 shocker Seven is shot indoors or in oppressive cloud cover and rain. There are no sunny scenes....at least until the film's climax which takes place in a barren, desert-like sandy area on the outskirts of the unnamed city in which the tale is based. Talk about visual choices. Fincher definitely did. And he populated them with characters and situations which sear the mind and make one grateful for his own less-dire existence. Morgan Freeman stars as Detective Somerset, who is days away from retirement. He is assigned to a case with newly-arrived detective Mills (Brad Pitt), who came to this cesspool of a city because he wanted to 'make a difference.' Somerset is initially unwilling to partner with Mills, but circumstances force the two to make their professional relationship work. There is a serial killer on the loose, and he is using Dante's literary "Seven Deadly Sins" as his blueprint. Within days, victims are found murdered in bizarre methods. The killer is leaving clues, some of them obvious and some of them not, and Somerset is the first to figure out that these murder methods skirt the parameters of the Seven Deadly Sins. The gluttony victim was forced at gunpoint to eat himself into a coma, at which point the killer viciously kicked him in the abdomen and initiated a fatal hemhorrage. The greed victim was a lawyer who was bound, handed a knife and--shades of The Merchant Of Venice--forced to carve a pound of flesh off himself. And....oh yes, sloth. The sloth victim is a doozy, by the way. You'll jump; that's a promise. As the two detectives become further immersed in the case, Mills' wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) decides to open a dialogue with her husband's new partner and ultimately invites Somerset to a dinner in the couple's rickety apartment, an affair which, stilted at first, becomes one of the film's few moments of genuine comic relief. Later, Tracy privately confides to Somerset in an achingly poignant scene in a greasy-spoon diner. She despises this town and its constant debauchery, and she has also become pregnant, unbeknownst to her husband. What should she do? "If you decide to keep (the child)," Somerset tells her cryptically, "spoil it every chance you get." It is an unsettling conclusion to a brutally honest scene. But there's still that whole murder case business. There are several leads, some of which turn into dead ends. There is a suspect who pulls a gun and initiates a shoot-out between the detectives, leading to a chase in (where else?) the rain. More sin-related murders crop up, and then the unexpected happens: the killer (a surprise cameo by a nearly-unrecognizable Oscar-winning actor who won't be revealed here) non-chalantly walks into the police precinct and turns himself in. Why? His work isn't quite finished. This is a madman with a peculiar intelligence about him. He proclaims with absolute conviction that his murders are justified, lapsing into near raving at one point. And worse, there are still two sins left to cover, and the killer, known only as John Doe, insists that his most ardent pursuers Mills and Somerset drive him to the deserted location where all will be revealed. Hence, the film's first ray of sunshine; whether or not this bizarre irony was a conscious choice or a happy accident is irrelevant. It simply works. John Doe has covered his tracks and made arrangements for a devastating conclusion to unfold. The final two sin-murders, the jaded horror fan would assume, must somehow become Mills and Somerset. Andrew Kevin Walker's script has a bone-chilling little twist, though. And the film's final line of dialogue, spoken as a voice-over by one character, is a final sublime literary reference: "Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part." Light a candle or curse the darkness? You be the judge. >>Back<< >>Archive Index<<