Playing on our own apathy?

Rating: Null/10 (28 November 2000)

Seven was vaguely entertaining and fabulously well filmed, but marred by a general lack of character development. While the film does well to create an oppressive aura over the unnamed city, I found that I really couldn't care less about the characters, which upon first viewing I saw as a major fault.
On the second viewing, I felt a little more kindly toward the movie. As one of the major themes of the story and the primary motivation of John Doe's killings is the apathy of modern society -that no one cares about anyone else- I wondered if David Fincher was trying to trick us into feeling the same way?
Was I deliberately not supposed to feel for the characters, in order to have some 'feeling' (albeit through a strange agent) shocked into me at the end? I'm not sure. Fincher has proved himself an excellent, intelligent filmmaker, but I'm still unsure of whether to offer him the benefit of the doubt in the case of Seven.
6/10.