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Directed by: David Fincher Starring: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt Se7en is director David Fincher's crime-thriller masterpiece, following the final week of Detective Summerset's (Freeman) career as he shows Detective Mills (Pitt) the ropes. After finding a man who was forced to eat to death Summerset believes they have stumbled upon something big, yet cannot convince anyone else of this. The next day after finding a murdered lawyer with the word 'greed' written in blood on the floor, Summerset returns to the first crime scene where he discovers the word 'gluttony' hidden behind the fridge. It is after this discovery that Summerset pieces together there is a serial killer killing for the seven deadly sins; gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath. There are many reasons I enjoy this movie. The beautiful atmosphere accompanied by perfect sound/score, the gripping suspense, and the concept itself. Yet the main reason is the characters, particularly contrast in character between Summerset and Mills. Summerset is more logical and methodical, whereas Mills seems to be more brash and impetuous. The way that they function together is fantastic, their different styles in their work, one burnt out at the end of his career, the other, an eager hot shot, both clash and meld together. The seperate way that they view the killer. Summerset has respect for what is being done, whereas Mills dismisses him as a nutjob. This can be seen evidentally towards the end of the film, while they both talk with Johthe killer, whom Kevin Spacey is perfectly cast as. The John Doe character is both beautiful and demented, yet undeniably intriguing, its a shame the character gets so little screen time, but by the time he appears, you feel like you allready know him. This is by far Brad Pitt's and David Fincher's greatest film. 5/5
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# ? May 3, 2004 06:43 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 15:57 |
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I enjoyed this movie, but I thought it seemed like they had a good idea, but didn't know how to pull it together in the end and give the villian real motives other than "he's insane". Still, 4/5.
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# ? May 3, 2004 06:51 |
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Omniarch summed it up nicely - the villians motivations just seemed - empty. The finale was rather tense though, as was the previous six sins. 4/5
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# ? May 3, 2004 07:09 |
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Seven was a clever movie with clever characters. I really liked Morgan Freeman as the old retired cop and Brad Pitt as the young kid desperately waiting to get on the case. The plot was interesting and I thought the ending was unexpected. 5/5
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# ? May 3, 2004 07:13 |
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I thought the ending was very disappointing, with all the buildup John Doe was giving it. I thought it had to be mind-blowing. It wasn't nearly what he made it out to be during the car ride. As is the way with me, if a film ends disappointingly, it fucks up a good deal of what would have otherwise been an awesome movie. 3/5 The box should have contained the fetus of his unborn kid
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# ? May 3, 2004 07:16 |
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For some reason this movie didn't seem that good to me. I saw the twist from a mile off and the whole thing seemed to be style over substance. In my opinion anyway. Great acting however saved this from being a total loss for me, but only for a 2 out of five.
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# ? May 3, 2004 10:04 |
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Brad Pitt can act! That was the first thought I had after watching this film. He does a good job as does Morgan. The end goes down as one of the best surprises of all time.
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# ? May 3, 2004 16:35 |
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I liked the movie, I like movies like these. But even before he gave up I was thinking that his wife might be a target. During their car ride he gave the ending away but it still was tense, most likely because of the music. For the added effect he should've added the fetus of his child in the box. Dole knew about the pregnancy somehow. Pitt acted very well and Dole just wasn't developed well enough.
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# ? May 25, 2004 07:34 |
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The main reason why I enjoyed this movie was the production design and the meticulous attention to detail. Whether it's the legions of roaches skittering across the bare floor of "Gluttony" or the torrents of silver rain that seem to constantly pour down on the characters, every frame of this movie looks like a gritty neo-noir panting hanging in an art gallery. Aside from that, Morgan Freeman always plays a reserved, calculating detective pretty well, and I'm a sucker for tightly-written detective plots circulating around serial killers. 5/5.
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# ? May 25, 2004 07:53 |
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I thought this was very interesting throughout. Each scene always held my interest all the way until the credits rolled. Also to the people who says they don't feel the villian's motives weren't convincing, this guy was crazy, what do you expect. He's not thinking clearly, so why would his actions make sense? Overall the movie was very well done and very well acted by all 4.5/5
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# ? Jun 12, 2004 05:51 |
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(It should be noted that some of my reviews are short only because I don't try to repeat things that have already been said, and other posters in this thread have already nailed how I feel about it.) The atmosphere that Fincher provided was brilliantly hopeless. Everyday was cloudy, everytime they were outside it was pouring, even when they were alone it was depressing and lonely, just ticking away time until they were thrust back into that dreary, melancholy world. The only time any of this changed was the very end, when the most horrible thing in the film happened. I'm not sure if this is Fincher's greatest film, but it is one of the greatest crime dramas I've ever seen. 5/5, the only negative I can apply is that the villian's motives weren't completely explained
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# ? Jun 12, 2004 06:40 |
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The only thing I wish this movie included was, perhaps during the credits, footage of the villian committing the murders. It would be an intense thing to watch. Some of the characters were thinly developed, but goddamn if this wasn't an insanelt tense and enjoyable movie. Loved it. 4.5
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# ? Jun 13, 2004 05:39 |
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Amazing movie. The performances (Pitt, Freedman, Spacey) are incredible. The direction by Fincher is by far his best work. Only good can be said about this movie, I loved every minute of it. It was so suspenseful, mysterious, original, and just an all-around masterpiece. Not the best movie I've ever seen, but definetly close. 5/5
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# ? Jun 13, 2004 07:31 |
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I finally got around to seeing this and was thoroughly disappointed. The acting on all accounts I found overdone and cliche (Freeman as the wise old man, Pitt as an impulsive tyro), the twist I saw an hour before the ending, the cinematography boring and used to cover the fact the plot, while an interesting idea, done all wrong. For example, Glutton was forced to eat himself to death and Pride to cut up her face, but the other murders were almost completely unexplained and unrelated to their sin. Every twist was stupid (fingerprints behind a painting? come on) and the ending a huge mess they try to hide with voice-over musings that made me want to vomit. There wasn't a moment I thought to myself that this movie was worth watching. Complete waste of two hours. Avoid at all costs if you're looking for a movie with any substance. 1/5
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# ? Oct 31, 2004 08:01 |
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Excellent, excellent movie. It's teetering on the edge of the Top 50 movies on IMDB, and deservedly so. First things first is the atmosphere, uncompromisingly dark, gritty and oppressive. So many movies, music videos and videogames have since tried to copy it, often with varying degrees of success, but nobody so far has gotten it so perfectly spot on. The movie is affecting, yet never does the ambience leap out and slap you to get your attention, it always remains ambience. Just very powerful ambience. The acting is great. Morgan's done better in his life, but not many. Pitt on the other hand, has never topped this role. His character is bordering on a cliche', but Pitt doesn't seem to care, his only interest is in making that character feel real. He manages excellently. As for the actor who plays the killer, well, the studio spent a massive amount of their budget to hire him and he turned out to be worth every penny. Sets go hand in hand with the atmosphere. Full goddamn marks, plus extra for the trouble they went through, according to one of the DVD commentaries. The soundtrack is remarkable, and can evoke the movie's atmosphere alone. The special edition DVD includes an option to play just the musical soundtrack, and it really is that bizarre and evocative. The opening remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" was a big hit in it's own right, deservedly so. David Bowie's "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" finishes the movie on a similarly twisted note. Inbetween, a rollicking play of sick composition. It's a shame the soundtrack available, ignores the title & credit tracks, and many of the composition pieces. It's a pretty abysmal CD, and does the movie's actual soundtrack no justice at all. So there's a great presentation on all fronts. But there's still the big question, the plot. You know it already. It was slightly cliche' to begin with, and it's been shamelessly impersonated time and time again since. You know 10 minutes into the movie how many people are going to die and roughly how. What matters is who's going to die, who's doing the killing, why, and how it can be stopped. The movie, thankfully, avoids becoming a cheap splattergore flick and after setting up the first couple of murders as being hideously grisly, it mostly skims over the rest (almost. There's the ending, of course). Instead, the focus is on Pitt trying to co-operate with Freeman. It's on their attempts to understand the killer's reasons. It's about how they track him down. It's about the slow maturing of Pitt's initially-childish character, and about the realisation of Freeman's character that his cynicism may not be completely unfounded, but it's not doing him any favours. If you go into this movie expecting to see seven really hideous murdesr, you'll go away disappointed. Almost everyone else will love it. The twists are entirely logical, yet well-thought out to remain subtle until you see them, when you'll think "Of COURSE, why didn't I notice that?" Except the ending twist. The ending twist has become one of the most talked-about, and has been the defining moment most people remember the movie by. It comes out of nowhere, capping off the movie absolutely perfectly, and is intelligent enough that you can be talking about it for an hour or so afterwards with your friends, and still be debating the finer points of how it came together and how fiendishly brilliant it was. I hate most crime thriller movies. This is one of only two that I genuinely enjoyed (the other being a movie that emulated Seven in many ways, "Saw"), and furthermore, one of my own top 20 movies of alltime. As an aside, the special edition DVD is one of the most complete packages I've seen in a long time, with material that really focuses on the production of the movie to a deep level, it's far from the usual trashy "special features" that just re-iterate the storyline for you before showing half an hour of people rendering CG creations. A great compliment to a genuine classic. 5/5 and not a speck less. Scar Trek fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Nov 3, 2004 |
# ? Nov 3, 2004 07:27 |
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I really didn't enjoy this movie at all. I felt that the only point was to shock the audience with more and more grisly murders, culminating in the ultimate "oh no!" moment at the end. Which, to my way of thinking, happens for no reason whatsoever. The killer commits horrible crimes, and there's no point/moral. Which isn't a requisite for a movie at all, but by the end of the movie i was just sickened and didn't see any redeeming qualities in it at all. Shock and gore fest, and not that intelligent; I really liked Pitt and Freeman in the movie, the ambience was great, but the story was a complete let down to me.
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# ? Nov 5, 2004 02:14 |
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A very dark movie, but I found myself enjoying it. The chemistry between Freeman and Pitt is pretty good. Gwyneth Paltrow simply exists in the movie and doesn't really help or harm the movie. Some of the sequences seem a little bit dry and slow the movie down considerably(Paltrow / Freeman Dialogue about her baby). Freeman sort of plays his aging / retiring veteran role that he seems to play in a lot of movies now a days. I really like how the movie was shot. The concept behind the movie (killing people based on their sins) is pretty cool, but poorly executed at times as some of the folks said above. Specifically Greed, and Sloth - I get how the guy was Greedy but I don't understand how his death involved Greed, and killing by Sloth was definitely dead on, but I don't understand how the man did something that was slothful... It just seems like he was killed that way. Also the last two sins Envy and Wrath seemed a bit rushed / not executed to plan. The only thing that I really didn't like in this movie was the ending. It just doesn't seem like it fits the rest of the movie and its easy to spot a mile away. 5/5 - Mainly for the atmosphere of the movie.
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# ? Nov 6, 2004 09:49 |
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The killer is not even revealed to you until the climax starts, there was no way to spot the ending to this movie an hour before it happened. I'm sorry I feel the need to defend this great great film as it is one of my favorites of all time. It's the other half of the reason I love Kevin Spacey so very much, if substance is what you're looking for see this film in an instant.
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# ? Nov 24, 2004 04:09 |
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I, as well, think that this film was excellent in just about every way except that Kevin Spacey's character was very underdeveloped and the ending wasn't very strong. Still, quite well executed otherwise. 4/5
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# ? Nov 28, 2004 08:01 |
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It was alright. 2/5
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# ? Feb 16, 2015 14:42 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 15:57 |
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I took great joy in the realization that Seven is a film noir with a horror movie soundtrack. After seeing it again for the first time in 15 years it has lost none of its atmosphere and impact. Great film. 5/5
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# ? Mar 16, 2015 14:42 |