Good but not as good as "The silence of the lambs".

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2000)

You're probably thinking that I am a very harsh guy, comparing "Se7en" to "The silence of the lambs". Well let me tell you why I am comparing them. The theme of the movie is pretty much the same as the one in "The silence of the lambs". I also once saw on a box that it was written and I quote "better than The silence of the lambs". Unfortunately, that isn't true. Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow can't give great performances like Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins gave in "The silence of the lambs". However, Morgan Freeman is a terrific actor and so is Kevin Spacey and so the two of them together can compensate for Pitt's and Paltrow's performance.
The movie starts off in a house. Someone has been murdered. The sin this person had committed was gluttony and it seemed he was killed in this way: someone held a gun against his head and forced him to eat spaghetti until he bursted open. The detective in charge of this case is an experienced detective named William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and is shortly teamed up with a young detective named David Mills (Brad Pitt). We them have the opening credits and the camera is filming inside the murderer's house. It is filming his hands which are working on a table and you realize how careful the psycho is. He cut off the end of his fingers and put bandages around them simply to be sure the police do not find any finger-prints.
The next murder is committed is a person whose sin was greed, then sloth, envy, wrath, pride, and finally lust. The seven sinners all having been murdered, Mills assumes that the murderer will not strike again and that he has only to catch him. But that's not what John Doe (Kevin Spacey), the murderer, has in mind. No, instead of hiding out after his seven murders, he turns himself over to the police and has a last surprise for the two detectives, a surprise that will horrify them and allow the viewer which one is able to know when to hold back and which one should be holding back.
David Fincher does a better job directing this than directing AlienÂ³. However, I thought there was too much unnecessary gore in the movie. Brad Pitt does a good job with what he is given and Morgan Freeman is as excellent a in any other movie. But Kevin Spacey walks away with the movie and gives probably the best performance as the crazy John Doe whose way to describe a murder is as scary as seeing him commit one. It wasn't any surprise he won best villain of the year at the MTV movie awards. I think he didn't get a nomination for best-supporting actor because he already had one in "The usual suspects" which he won. The only disappointing part of the movie is truly Gwyneth Paltrow's performance who seems to be shy in front of the camera. It's a good movie that got a little too much credit but is still worth watching.