Seven movie review & film summary (1995) | Roger Ebert (2024)

"Seven," a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligentthriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you canbear to watch, it you will see filmmaking of a high order. It tells the storyof two detectives - one ready to retire, the other at the start of his career -and their attempts to capture a perverted serial killer who is using the SevenDeadly Sins as his scenario.

Asthe movie opens, we meet Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a meticulous veteran copwho lives a lonely bachelor's life in what looks like a furnished room. Then hemeets Mills (Brad Pitt), an impulsive young cop who actually asked to betransferred into Somerset's district. The two men investigate a particularlygruesome murder, in which a fat man was tied hand and feet and forced to eathimself to death.

Hiscrime was the crime of Gluttony. Soon Somerset and Mills are investigatingequally inventive murders involving Greed, Sloth, Lust and the other deadlysins. In each case, the murder method is appropriate, and disgusting (onevictim is forced to cut off a pound of his own flesh; another is tied to a bedfor a year; a third, too proud of her beauty, is disfigured and then offeredthe choice of a call for help or sleeping pills). Somerset concludes that thekiller, "John Doe," is using his crimes to preach a sermon.

Thelook of "Seven" is crucial to its effect. This is a very dark film,the gloom often penetrated only by the flashlights of the detectives. Even whenall the lights are turned on in the apartments of the victims, they cast onlywan, hopeless pools of light.

Althoughthe time of the story is the present, the set design suggests the 1940s; GaryWissner, the art director, goes for dark blacks and browns, deep shadows,lights of deep yellow, and a lot of dark wood furniture. It rains almost allthe time.

Inthis jungle of gloom, Somerset and Mills tread with growing alarm. Somersetintuits that the killer is using books as the inspiration for his crimes, andstudies Dante, Milton and Chaucer for hints. Mills settles for the Cliff Notesversions. A break in the case comes with Somerset's sudden hunch that thekiller might have a library card. But the corpses pile up, in cold fleshydetail, as disturbingly graphic as I've seen in a commercial film. The onlyglimmers of life and hope come from Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), Mills' wife.

Amovie like this is all style. The material by itself could have been handled inmany ways, but the director, David Fincher ("Alien 3"), goes forevocative atmosphere, and the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker, writes dialogue thatfor Morgan Freeman, in particular, is wise, informed and poetic. ("Anyonewho spends a significant amount of time with me," he says, "finds medisagreeable.") Eventually, it becomes clear that the killer's sermon isbeing preached directly to the two policemen, and that in order to understandit, they may have to risk their lives and souls.

"Seven"is unique in one detail of its construction; it brings the killer onscreen withhalf an hour to go, and gives him a speaking role. Instead of being simply thequarry in a chase, he is revealed as a twisted but articulate antagonist, whohas devised a horrible plan for concluding his sermon. (The actor playing thekiller is not identified by name in the ads or opening credits, and so I willleave his identity as another of his surprises.) "Seven" is well-madein its details, and uncompromising in the way it presents the disturbingdetails of the crimes. It is certainly not for the young or the sensitive. Goodas it is, it misses greatness by not quite finding the right way to end. All ofthe pieces are in place, all of the characters are in position, and then - Ithink the way the story ends is too easy. Satisfying, perhaps. But not worthyof what has gone before.