The seven sins of a serial killer

Rating: 8/10 (11 June 2019)

"Seven" features a psychopath who is at least as convinced of his moral superiority and his mission to combat moral decay as Travis Bickle is in "Taxi driver" (1976, Martin Scorsese). On top of that he structures his murders along the Biblical lines of the seven sins from the Apocalyps. In doing that he is not entirely consistent. In some cases the sinner is his victim (gluttony), in other cases he forces the sinner to be the murderer (lust).
In search of the psychopath is a couple of detectives. This couple consists of, as in so many films before, an ambitious rookie and an old hand just before his retirement. This maybe a cliché, but "Seven" nevertheless succeeds in giving it an original form. The rookie is looking for the usual evidence while the old hand is studying literature in the library in an attempt to unravel the twisted mind of the psychopath.