Nothing new

Rating: 3/10 (20 March 1999)

Seven has become a huge public success all over the world. That I can understand. What I find more surprising is that it also got well received by the critics. Most praised it as well made, exciting and original thriller. Some even thought it was a masterpiece. But in my opinion, Seven doesn't provide the genre of police thriller noting new than dim lighting and copious amount of rain.
Because Seven has much more in common with other films in this genre than most people realized. A couple of clichés are that there's a team of two cops who investigates the case consists of an old black man who is tired of his job and look forward to his retirement. The other one is his opposite; a young white man who wants up.
The murders that Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) are investigating has been done with the seven deadly sins as source of inspiration. The killer also leaves short literature quotes. Mainly Dante, something that makes Somerset (of course the intellectual of the two cops) take Mills (who only seems to read Guns and Ammo) to the library.
Director David Fincher - whose only feature film before this was Alien 3, but loads of music videos behind - reasoned "I don't feel at home in libraries either... What music should I pick? It has to be something cultural. At least we take something that everybody recognizes - Air by Bach.
Seven doesn't have any other intentions than being the two hour thriller with some disgusting corpses, an odd police couple and a crazy killer it actually is. Then it should be regarded as such and nothing more.