WHY is this considered a good movie????

Rating: 2/10 (15 April 2004)

I'm sorry for those of you who think that a watered-down pseudo-sadistic murder spree makes for compelling or an intelligent film. It doesn't.
Let's set aside for the moment the miserable lighting and cinematography in this film -- half the movie is so monochromatic that it's difficult to tell what you're looking at, and the 'artistic' angles compound the problem.
Let's set aside the absolutely rotten characterizations -- Freeman tries hard with his portrayal of the absolutely-cookie-cutter jaded soon-to-retire cop, but there's nothing there, and Brad Pitt's scenery-chewing over-the-top "look at me, I'm sooooo mad!" rookie-detective turn is, frankly, laughably silly. Gwyneth Paltrow has absolutely nothing to do, and Spacey's character is...well, he's not a character. He's a bit of hackneyed dialogue, without motive, without charisma, without even a semi-consistent tone (we're supposed to believe that this infinitely careful killer is also so ramblingly incompetent that he leaves evidence all over his apartment? That he's so confident he knocks off cops' wives, but so easily frazzled he loses his cool under light questioning in the police car?
Let's instead focus on plot holes so wide you could toss a horse through them.
What kind of police department is this? There is not ONE ATTEMPT to answer some of the obvious questions that would be asked in any murder investigation (is there surveillance video of the lawyer's offices (there would be)? Where did the killer get his antibiotics (those things are tracked, numbskulls)? Why aren't the cops even TRYING to predict the killer's victim pattern, after they've been given ridiculously explicit hints? Most importantly, the entire ending is completely implausible...under no circumstances would any department, anywhere, EVER, send two detectives off with the high-profile confessed murderer like that. When Spacey proposes his little 'deal,' the cops would have said "tough. Rot in jail, sicko."
I suppose the success of "Se7en" proves that if you shower an audience with enough slickly-produced gore (not even that imaginatively rendered), they'll buy it, particularly if you layer on some random pseudo-literary quotation to give it a sheen of "art." A sad comment on the state of the horror genre.