Inconsistent, but tries hard to be clever.

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2000)

I watched Se7en on video last night, for the first time after its theatrical release in Germany on 23 November 1995. At the time, I thought it was brilliant and saw it a total of four times in theatres, both in English and dubbed. I was in particular impressed by the character of Lt. William Somerset.
That is the crux of the problem. Last night, viewed from a distance (in time), I wondered about, among other things, the Lieutenant's name. What is the connection between W. Somerset Maugham and the character played by Morgan Freeman? Is a literary allusion intended to provide the movie with a pseudo-intellectual touch? Impressive.
What irritated me most, however, were the script's many inconsistencies. Examples to illustrate the point: SPOILERS ALERT 1) Let's accept the assumption that the FBI compiles lists of indexed titles and keeps tabs on those who take them from libraries. Any person who has ever accessed a database knows that in order for a search to produce results as accurate as the ones yielded in Se7en, the search criteria must exactly match the results (and vice versa). How on earth did the two detectives know exactly what titles John Doe had taken out?
And if, in order to get a library card, you must provide identification, why would the killer, smart as he is, supply his real address and a name like 'John Doe'. How would a librarian react when confronted with a name like that? Suspicion is the word, I believe.
2) On the drive out of town, to the scene of the two last murders, John Doe rages against the notion that his victims were 'innocent'. What about Detective Mills's wife and her baby, in particular the latter? Why did they have to die, even if John Doe's self-admitted mortal sin is Envy? That makes a total of nine victims, not seven. And if death is, in Doe's opinion, the punishment for each of the mortal sins, how can he be sure that Mills will be executed for shooting him? And why did one of the victims (Pride) have an, at least minimal, chance to save her life?
3) In the scene in Doe's apartment, Somerset comments that it would take a team of 50 men a whole month of 24 hr shifts to read all the notebooks. I wonder how long it took Doe to fill them.
4) At the dinner table in the Mills's apartment, David claims that they found out about its proximity to the subway/trains only after they had moved in. The real estate agent is supposed to have shown them the place briefly only, though on more than one occasion. Now, even though the city is unnamed, it is large, with regular subway/train traffic, let's say at intervals of 10 minutes. I wonder how the Detective was suckered into renting the place, in particular as it seems to be a large apartment, looking at which would definitely take more than ten minutes.
Suspension of disbelief should be the basis of watching most movies, but Se7en stretches the demands on credulity rather thin.