Pretty good, if you like dark sinister movies.

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2001)

***Spoilers Included **** I'm not ordinarily a horror fan, nor a crime drama fan. This movie is a little bit of both, and in some ways, neither. The crime drama portion is pretty straight forward--serial killer with seven deadly sins as a theme (when exactly is Hollywood going to give up the religios nutbag as murderer scenario? Utterly stale). The horror is a little more nuanced--the murders really are progressively more disgusting and disturbing, and really indicate not just a human gone insane, but rather a human turned into a monster. That's why Spacey's character is so pivotal, not just that he's the murderer--but the way he plays it. He's polite, conventional, intelligent, even a touch feminine (epicene I think is the word).
A famous historian once pondered the "banality of evil." The movie is in some ways about that--how this seemingly ordinary person has gone off the deep end, and in some ways, how he reflects an overall society which is doing the same thing.
The movie itself is very stylized--with colors and scenes carefully chosen to reflect the story, as in the model (pride) murder scene. Nothing but whites everywhere, splotched with vivid red blood. The characters are in some way the same: Morgan Freeman has an interesting take on Somerset, he's almost like a darkly fatigued Felix Unger, compulsive and neat, almost a reaction against the dark unnamed city around him, where it rains constantly--we don't really see the sun in the movie, not until the very end.
Pitt is pretty decent as a dim but ambitious young police officer--you can tell he's not very bright, but begins to get the hang of things toward the end.
Worthwhile, but some of the praise heaped on the movie is a little misplaced. This isn't as good as Silence of the Lambs, much better than the wretched Bone Collector and Hannibal. So all in all, if you dig serial killer movies, this is a decent addition to the list.