David Fincher rises from his Alien Ashes and delivers Se7en

Rating: 9/10 (18 June 2000)

After the unfortunate debacle with Alien3 (they couldn't even get the title right since a lot of viewers thought it was Alien Cubed..but never mind!), David Fincher fights back with a superbly crafted murder/mystery which goes beyond the norm (and others would add, the pail) for police crime movies.
Not a particularly complex story - all we have is a typical Mr Average Man who has finally had enough of present day society's steep decline into...well, as the title almost suggests....the Seven Deadly Sins.
His grisly murders represent each Sin and only a soon-to-be-retired police detective who "...can't get involved..." (skillfully played by Morgan Freeman) and his young upstart sidekick (Brad Pitt) manage to unravel the case, but at huge personal cost to both.
Its difficult to know where to start when praising such a brilliant film. But to begin with some of Fincher's old Alien3 directing habits are carried into this film. Most of the story is set in miserable, dank, wet and gloomy places - but this isn't a complaint but only adds to the foreboding that awaits us. You feel as if you're swimming in a pool of slime trying to keep afloat as Fincher moves from one scene to another, never letting the viewer, or indeed the main characters time to take a breath.
Fortunately Fincher doesn't go over the top showing us every murder in explicit detail. He knows we are intelligent enough to work out in our own fetid imaginations what the camera doesn't allow us to see. But having said that, the corpses that we do see would make even Dirty Harry choke!
Editing & lighting also go hand in hand with the cinematography, so too does the splatter-punk music score that surrounds the start & finish of the film. In fact its like a conspiracy against the audience - all the unit directors of the film crew (art, sound,2nd unit, editing, score etc) have ganged up with Fincher to give the viewer a real hard time - a feeling of truly being out there with Freeman & Pitt.
Morgan Freeman is, as always, a pleasure to watch. He seems to have hit all the right moves these last few years, especially in the underrated Shawshank Redemption. His character is very slow, methodical, patient...all those things his partner, Brad Pitt, lacks so glaringly,
Pitt is perfect for the young brash detective. The two cops remind me of reading a book - Freeman plays the cop page by page by page never wanting to cut a corner or skip a detail; while Pitt plays his character chapter by chapter, ever moving forward, not having the patience to look at the minute details on each page...and boy does he get the Early Morning Wakeup Call at the end of the film!!!!
But to my mind, Kevin Spacey, who plays Jon Doe, is the real king player here. Critically acclaimed in The Usual Suspects, LA Confidential & Glengarry Glen Ross), Spacey pulls off yet another masterclass act here.
He is not a madman or psychopath (as Brad Pitt feels he is) even though his crimes would make you think otherwise. Instead he is just a well-educated citizen who has simply had enough of seeing society fall apart outside his front door, and the police & the courts are seen as being impotent to do anything about it.
Spacey knows what Fincher wants from his character and plays it with relish; similar to John Malkovich's Mitch Leary character in Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire.
This isn't a glamour film that will make you glow & smile when you leave the theatre. This film wants to crush you with the sordid reality of what is actually happening to us all out there - a film that tells it as it is, and not as Hollywood wants us to view the world from their glittering perspective.
Se7en is a film where other detective films should be judged. It's unforgiving & relentless but a visual masterpiece for all that...and as for the ending....well.....
*****/*****