A disturbing and brilliant film

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 1999)

Few films genuinely shock me nowadays, but this did. It is horrible yet fascinating, it fulfills the morbid curiosity which is in us all whether we want to admit it or not. There have been other films about serial killers but none as desperate or dark as this masterpiece.
It is the unrelenting mental will of Spacey's character that chilled me the most. His utter insanity was matched only by his ingenuity and discipline. His character is one of the most truly evil in film history, forget hannibal lecter !
The whole film is brilliantly made, the performances are great, even from Brad Pitt, and the atmosphere is wonderfully set, but there are two particular things which, for me, set this movie apart.
The first is the way in which the city setting they are in is every bit as all consuming and intimdating as Spacey's character. People are swallowed up and spat out in this world, no one counts. It reminded me very much of an Alan Moore graphic novel called 'Watchmen' in which a character called Rorschach becomes a vigilante to clean the streets of the 'scum'. Spacey's character is somewhat like this striving to show people the evil that surrounds them. The irony is that his methods are wholely more evil than anything he wishes to illustrate.
The second is the ending. Never has there been an ending like it to my knowledge. It is hard to describe how it makes you feel. There is no way he can lose, you feel cheated whilst still appreciating the cleverness of the manufactured situation. It leaves you with nothing exactly reflecting how Brad Pitt's charcter must feel at this moment. The film leaves you bewildered and mentally fatigued.
However the perfectly handled ,and completely unique, ending completes an awesome film.It is very downbeat and critical of humanity, Morgan freeman's character re inforces this in his final line, but there was a place for a film such as this and Se7en filled it.