Successful for genre, but then again...

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 1999)

My approach to Seven was one of low expectations. Based on the stylistic opening credits, I was expecting to be assaulted with low-angle extreme closeup murky cinematography designed to capitalize on human reflex. American film has been thwarted with bad technique in the suspense/mystery genre. Instead of style and creativity, many directors have opted for the ole standby of loud unexpected noises/music followed by the alerting appearance of the villain. Snore...However, such is not the case with David Fincher's Seven. The style of Seven is fairly straightforward for the first seventy minutes of the film: What you see is what you get. Unapologetically grotesque images from the crime scenes of a serial murder and a flood of rain in a dingy, dirty-textured metropolitan city. The plot is nothing we haven't seen before, but it was plenty enough to keep you interested in learning about the murderer. However, the main characters could not have been more contrived. Morgan Freeman's character, Detective Summerset, was catatonic to the point of being convincingly dull. The writer went for the starkest contrast with the character Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) by giving him the playground mentality of hockey player turned homicide detective. The results were destructive to the film's effect. In the end, Mills and Summerset do their best to ruin the audience's interest in their involvement. Gwynneth Paltrow would receive mention if her character weren't a mere fixture within a plot. The characters just didn't help this film at all. It was one of those all too often cases where the actors look the part but the part is badly written =( However, much to the credit of the production designer and cinematographer, the mood of this film was still very effective. There was however one other regrettable inconsistency: For the first seventy minutes or so of the film, the audience forcably endures the foul, wet and lonely darkness of the city environment only to have the rug pulled out in the closing moments when the setting changes to a sun-bleached desert scape. Hmmm...7 out of 10?