Disturbing, dark and brilliant

Rating: Null/10 (29 September 1998)

I remember watching "Alien 3" and not being too fond of it. I was impressed with the overall look of the movie and the darkness of it but it just didn't seem to fit in with the previous two movies. I remembered the director's name and found myself looking out for more of his work. I was extremely excited in 1995 when I found out he had directed "Seven" since I thought his career had been destroyed by "Alien 3". I was clearly wrong. I saw "Seven" and walked out of the theater not knowing how I felt about the movie. It stayed with me for a week so I went to see it again. Brilliant! Morgan Freeman is so amazing it's painful. He takes a cop movie cliche (the soon to be retired, embittered cop) and takes it to amazing heights. He allows you to understand his character completely. A beautiful performance.
The movie is incredibly dark not only in tone but physically. Somehow cinematographer Darius Khondji manages to take a desert setting in the middle of the day and make it dark, shadowy and bleak. The dark look of the movie adds to the overall feel of despair.
"Seven" pretty much gets your attention from the very beginning (introducing Freeman's character and Brad Pitt. . .who is really good) and then throws you a pretty disturbed title sequence which makes you kind of twitchy and puts you in the proper frame of mind.
The movie starts off very graphically with the 'gluttony' killing. If you manage to make it through the scene where the body is discovered (I swear, you can almost smell that apartment!) and the autopsy scene you've already sat through the goriest parts. This doesn't mean that you can relax, though.
A good job by all involved. We can only hope that David Fincher keeps making movies this disturbing and interesting. It seems as if he's definitely on to something.