Excellent craft work but not art

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2007)

Watching how the two detectives (a beginner and an experienced one) are pursuing a very intelligent serial killer is extremely well played and directed. Alone their interactions during the investigation is worth seeing the movie. The whole film is very much a male-type story except the character of the wife of the young detective. The appearance of the feminine character gives a human flavor to the work of the detectives transforming their male-like competition into elderly-young cooperation. Why I rate only 3 out of 10? Because the authors do not seem to understand the fundamental concept of the film, the 7 cardinal sins. The 7 cardinal sins are not actually sins themselves but are the source of other sins. Example: a married man seeing a pretty woman can feel desire to have her, but this is because men are biologically designed like this. If he acts to have the woman despite being married then he commits sins, but this sin is called adultery. So, in fact, there is one voluntary sinner in the film: the serial killer. The others - as the senior detective explains - just fail to work towards a balanced life, towards being able to love. The conclusion, that "life is ugly but let's work to make it better" is therefore flawed and makes the film a technically excellent work without the spirit that distinguishes craft work from true art.