Pretentious and disturbingly overrated

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2004)

I went through these comments because I was trying to figure out why people like this movie so much. I wondered if I had missed or misinterpreted something, but now it just looks like these viewers are way too impressed by a few sophomoric "themes" and a bunch of cutesy "twists."
Direction/atmosphere: the atmosphere is the movie's greatest strength. It's certainly vivid, though it's so relentless and there is so little variety in the movie's mood that it becomes a drag. Anyway, stuff like rain and good lighting are nothing without a good script, so moving on . . .
Characters: come on, classic Hollywood "mismatched buddies" movie, only without the slapstick. The young, overeager cop and the "jaded" cop who slowly learns how to deal with him. Give me a break. There's nothing here that I haven't seen in 500 other cop movies. They just stuck this million-year-old and million-times-used Hollywood trope in the middle of a serial killer movie. Bravo. As for whether John Doe is a "great villain" (I can't believe people would compare him to Keyser Soze or Hannibal Lecter), more on that in the "themes."
Plot/twists: What exactly do people think is "clever" about haivng each murder correspond to one of the 7 deadly sins? The cleverest one is the first one--the killer makes the guy "glutton himself to death" by eating until his stomach bursts--and that isn't exactly mind-blowing, but once it's out of the way and you get the basic idea, all the others are 5x less elegant. It would be cooler if the killer had actually found a way to *truly* turn people's own faults against them--i.e., trapping the "Greed" guy by making him put himself in harm's way when tempted by the promise of money, or killing the "Lust" victim just by tempting them with an attractive but diseased person. Instead, all of these murders come down to the murderer holding a gun to the person and ordering them to act something out that in some (often convoluted) way has something to do with the sin. For lust, he kills a woman while she's having sex. This is supposed to be clever/creative?
And it gets weaker, not stronger, at the end. **Spoilers alert, I guess.** The "envy" victim doesn't die of envy--instead, he kills her and explains to the cop that he's guilty of envy. How elegant. The final twist--making the guy kill him out of wrath--is the cleverest, and is cute, but that's about all I can say about it. It certainly doesn't live up to the ridiculous buildup they give it during that car ride when they say this will be a "masterpiece" and "remembered by everyone." A killer killed 6 people in contrived ways that somehow had something to do with the 6 sins, and then for the 7th he got someone to kill him out of wrath. I mean . . . not bad, but certainly not great. Plus, that last scene doesn't even make sense. If I were Morgan Freeman, I would say "Hey, put the gun down and just beat the guy up." That would be infinitely more satisfying anyway, and it would be pretty freaking easy to claim it was in self-defense afterward . . . good thing for John Doe's little scheme that they didn't think of it. Anyway, the ending is cute, but not the kind of "mind-blowing ending" that would make up for an otherwise ho-hum movie.
Themes: OK, I have a major beef with anyone who calls this movie "profound" or the killer's philosophical view "interesting." We all know there are lots of people doing bad things in the world, but: (a) it seems to me that the "seven deadly sins" are entirely the wrong place to focus, as evidenced by John Doe's unconvincing "You mean a guy didn't deserve to die for being so fat it was gross?" Come on--things like gluttony and sloth are things that you should stay away from for your own sake, but in the scheme of things that people should be killed for, they should be all the way at the bottom. You're telling me that sloth is worse than deceptiveness? Or, say, racism? I don't even think there's anything wrong with lust. And wrath can be justified. (b) Granted that we know lots of people do bad things, what exactly does it accomplish OR illustrate OR express to pick out 7 people (one of whom wasn't even guilty of any of the 7 sins) and kill them in ways that graphically illustrate the 7 sins? Is this supposed to show how sinning will kill you? (Only if there's a serial killer holding a gun to your mouth making you act it out . . .) Or just reinforce the message "Hey, sinning is bad?"
They try to present John Doe as this mysterious, rational, calculating, intriguing man completing a masterpiece, but I end up seeing him as a nutcase whose "project" makes no sense and doesn't express anything meaningful. A truly chilling character is one who scares me not just by being violent, but through the idea that he has some sort of special wisdom or intelligence that threatens my view of myself as "normal" and "right." Keyser Soze (a true mastermind) has this. Hannibal Lecter does as well. Some idiot who kills 7 random people because he's off on a Bible-beating rant that's barely coherent? Later guys, I'm gonna go watch The Usual Suspects.