Mildred Foster

"Seven" is a manipulative, heavy-handed emotion jerker that forces the audience down a silly and sadist road. It also explains America's fascination with violence. It gets fed by films like this. Story: A young and handsome detective (Brad Pitt) gets on a new job in the homicide department of an unnamed city resembling New York or Chicago. He meets an older detective, the world-weary and experienced investigator played by Morgan Freeman. First, the two policeman seem not to be able to warm to another. An alarming series of violent and sadist murders take place. But the Brad Pitt character and the Norman Freeman character start to like one another. Brad Pitt's lovable and nice wife (played by Gwyneth Paltrow in one of her best roles) facilitates the friendship. The film is a descent into a hopeless and deeply sadist urban world. 7 murders, one more disturbing than the last, build a puzzle, which gets gradually solved. The two detectives work together. The end is shocking and nihilistic. But in reality, its is a calculated play on perverted peeping-tom instincts of the audience, nothing but a cheap trick. The director David Fincher turns the machine, like in his other movies, and churns out a soulless concoction, which is the simile of a good film, but it is not a good film. Only, because the audience is whipped through shock, repulsion, sexual arousal and devastating destruction of all hope and everything that is good, it does not mean that they just had been in the presence of something profound. More, like a perverted schlock C movie. The actors are good tough.