Seven (1995)
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Richard Roundtree
Review by Laurence Mixson (venom8@hotmail.com)
>From Fully Loaded Entertainment: http://www.geocities.com/~fullyloaded
***1/2 out of ****
It always takes me a while to review a movie after I see it. I can't sit down immediately after viewing a film and write a review of it. I have to sort it out, think it over, go through the ending and beginning and everything else. When I finished watching Seven last night after watching it, I didn't know quite what to think. I knew it was a good movie, sure, but I still couldn't form any true impressions of it. When I woke up this morning and thought about it, I got a depressed, unsettling feeling. Seven is, in no ways, a happy movie. Of course, you probably knew that already, unless people being killed by a nutball based on the "deadly sins" sounds like a hilarious romp to you(and believe me, where I live, this sometimes isn't too far from the truth.) It has a brutal, unrelenting finale, that not only is superior to the overrated Silence of the Lambs but is much darker and grimmer. All though not very realistic, I was able to forgive it for that because, hey, like there's ever been a realistic ending to a serial killer movie. C'mon, Silence of the Lambs was less believable... The movie follows two detectives: Sommerset(Freeman), a cop retiring in a week who is paired with a young, break-all-the-rules wild card named Mills(Pitt). Formulaic? Sure. But the movie rises far above the cliched characters, and both actors, especially Freeman, breathe energetic wisps of breath into their roles. The detectives are assigned one day to investigate a truly bizzarre homicide: an obese man was forced to eat spaghetti until he died. The only clue they have is "gluttony" written on the wall and a brief note tacked behind the refrigerator witha quote from the author Dante. More killings follow, based on the sins of Sloth, Greed, and others. Viewers beware: although the movie contains little on-screen violence, the afterviews of the killings are graphically intense and sometimes disgusting, especially when you begin to replay in your mind the murders and how long they took to committ. Although he doesn't appear until about the last 25 minutes of the movie(well, he makes a brief appearance before then, but you don't acutally see him and he doesn't talk), no serial killer movie is complete with out a captivating, creepy killer. I won't spoil the surprise for people who haven't seen the movie by naming the killer, but I will say that you've probably seen him before, he's a recent Academy Award winner for a movie I gave ****, and he's excellent in his role. There are very characters in Seven other than Mills and Sommerset. The only other person who has a signifagant role next to Pitt and Freeman is Paltrow, who brings shimmering glimpses of hope to the dispairing and gloomy atmosphere created by the director, David Fincher(Alien 3, The Game). Although her role is very small, its signigant more in idea, especially with the shocking conclusion. So is Seven a must see movie? That's hard to say, I don't really believe in the concept of must see movies. But if you are into movies, and are looking for a good one, then Seven is a very strong recommendation. It's entertaining, but don't expect a good time.
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