A dark psyco-thriller at its best

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2018)

A veteran detective counting his days to retirement and a rookie officer hungry for success and glory team up to hunt down a serial killer who refers to seven deadly sins in his gruesome murders. There's not a specific setting for the city where the drama unfolds except that it's a metropol area. The movie is perfect in directing, editing, acting and cinematography. Dark indoor scenes and narrow gloomy alleys shot under overcast and rainy skies fit very well with the brooding theme of the movie. Despite some intensive chase scenes and violence, Seven is not an action packed movie. Although it's technically classified as a crime thriller the psychological aspects of the main characters are emphasized. Some reviewers describe it as a slow paced movie but it is not. The scenes involving character development are as captivating as those with gun fights and rooftop chases. The tempo is successfully balanced in subplots but the tension is never lost and the movie never gets boring. While horrid murder scenes aren't for fainthearted they can't be compared to cartoonish blood and gore extravaganza in Tarantino's movie caricatures. Like all other scenes, the director D. Fincher uses them in moderation to instill terror in the audience. Some reviewers' comparison of the serial killer John Doe to Hannibal Lecture is ridiculous. With his unrealistic superhuman physical strength, H. Lecture's silly cartoon character looks more funny than frightening in scenes where he bites off ears and noses in a straight jacket and finds his way out from a locked iron cage. John Doe, on the other hand, is an average person who can be easily taken down in a fistfight but his psychopathic ramblings give him a much more real and menacing look.