Seven

The movie Seven (also known as Se7en) is a 1995 American murder thriller starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, revolving around a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins, who uses the sins themselves as calling cards in a series of ritualistic murders. more...

It was directed by David Fincher (his second movie) and written by Andrew Kevin Walker who received a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The film utilizes a visual film technique known as bleach bypass. Film editor Richard Francis-Bruce was nominated for an Academy Award for Film Editing.

Cast

• Brad Pitt ... Detective David Mills
• Morgan Freeman ... Detective Lt. William Somerset
• Gwyneth Paltrow ... Tracy Mills
• R. Lee Ermey ... The Captain
• Daniel Zacapa ... Detective Taylor
• John Cassini ... Detective Davis
• Kevin Spacey ... John Doe
• Reg. E Cathey ... Coroner
• George Christy ... Workman
• Endre Hules ... Cab Driver

Tagline: "Seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die."

Seven stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as the two detectives in charge of solving the crimes, Gwyneth Paltrow as the wife of Pitt's character, and Kevin Spacey as the killer, John Doe. Spacey asked that his name not be included in the opening credits, in order to conceal the killer's identity.

Theme

Fincher uses several components of the classic film noir to accentuate the perversion he perceives within today's society. The film mainly focuses on habitual perpetration of the seven deadly sins. They are portrayed to be such a frequent occurrence in society that everyone has become desensitized to them, and the only person who sees the evil in society's behavior is a serial killer. The serial killer takes judgment into his own hands, and begins to punish people for committing sins.

Plot

Greed and Gluttony

Detective Lt. William Somerset (Freeman) (possibly named for W. Somerset Maugham) is preparing to retire from police work after many gruelling and unpleasant years of dealing with the destitution and apathy bred within New York City, which is depicted as sordid and dark. In his last week, he is partnered with Detective David Mills (Pitt), a much younger and more naive officer who just relocated to the department from Upstate New York.

They meet one another at a crime scene in which an obese man who was force-fed, bound and tortured, lies dead. He has wires on ankles and wrists, and there is a bucket of vomit under the table. A pathologist later verifies that the man was fed repeatedly, then kicked in the side so he burst. This caused his stomach to split and led to an internal hemorrhage that brought on his demise. The first bit of evidence that has the two detectives believe they are after a killer with a grudge is Somerset's discovery of two shopping receipts, indicating that the killer had left the cockroach-infested, filthy apartment to visit a supermarket in between force-feeding the victim, who had eaten all the food in the house.

After their captain (R. Lee Ermey) confronts the detectives in his office, Somerset argues that Mills should be placed on a different assignment. However, soon after, the gruesome murder of the prominent Jewish lawyer Eli Gould is discovered. Gould was made to excise a pound of his own flesh in the tradition of William Shakespeare's Jewish character Shylock. A note is left in Gould office with an extract from The Merchant of Venice, and written on the floor in Gould's blood is the word GREED. Somerset goes back to the first victim's house and does some re-investigating, and finds GLUTTONY written in grease behind the refrigerator of the apartment in which the obese man was murdered. He also finds a note reading "Long is the way and hard that out of Hell leads up to light", a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost. He begins to suspect that the crimes are related, and confronts his superior to warn that there will be five more murders, each patterned after the remaining five of the seven deadly sins. He says that the Milton quote means the murder spree is just beginning.

Somerset and Mills team up once again, and all previous tension seems to be obliterated after Mills' wife Tracy invites the demoralised and pessimistic detective to their new house for dinner. That same evening, they find a set of fingerprints at the site of Gould's murder. The evidence, hidden behind a painting which Mrs. Gould notices has been turned upside down, belong to a known child molester and drug dealer, but as the task force prepare to storm the offender's residence the following morning, Somerset is already sure that he is not the person they are looking for.

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