Seven (1995) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  David Fincher

Starring:  Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, R. Lee Ermey

I don't know if Seattle receives as much rainfall as the unnamed city in Seven, but the chilling, dank atmosphere of the crime drama Seven is now set and never wavers.   Seven doesn't seem like it takes place in an urban landscape, but almost a world of its own in which morals and laws are hanging on by their fingernails.  The two detectives who occupy the foreground of Seven are veteran, nearly retired William Somerset (Freeman), who takes on newly transferred David Mills (Pitt) as his partner to investigate a bizarre series of murders inspired by the seven deadly sins.

Mills is forever impatiently waiting for action, while Somerset stoically understands that the bulk of detective work is sitting around awaiting test results and doing library research.  The men discover an obese man drowned in a giant bowl of pasta, a man tied to a bed and allowed to atrophy for a full year, a prostitute hacked to death by a strap-on knife, a disfigured woman who committed suicide, and an attorney who has cut a pound of flesh from himself.   These represent gluttony, sloth, lust, vanity, and greed, but how will envy and wrath play into these diligently planned and mercilessly executed murders?  

Somerset almost is in awe of the killer's patience and nerve.  Leads and clues are followed up, but the murderer stays just out of reach while taunting Somerset and Mills.  David's wife Tracy (Paltrow) questions their move to such a crime-ridden city and expresses her loneliness and anxiety to Somerset over lunch one afternoon.  She tells Somerset she is pregnant, but doesn't know whether she wants to bring the child into the world.  In the universe of Seven, we don't know if she'll ever have the chance.

Freeman is the calming influence over the hot-headed Pitt as a cop who thinks he's seen it all until he realizes this is entirely new territory.  The killer's identity is revealed strategically in a key moment, but only because he wants it that way for his own reasons which are soon made clear to Somerset and Mills at a critical juncture and oddly enough, when the sun is peaking through for the first time in a week.  Director Fincher establishes the dark tone of Seven while moving the story along even in the silences and waiting which accompany police work.  Mills thirsts to be out of the office and in the middle of the action, but later he finds he should be careful what he wishes for, as we understand this world is growing more and more realistic by the day.