Review of Se7en (1995) by Jake H — 01 Sep 2013

"How can I bring a child into a world like this?" Detective Somerset (played by the always brilliant, Morgan Freeman) asks himself when remembering his chances to do so. "How can a person grow up with all this around them?".

Well, in this oppressively bleak but slickly provocative thriller by David Fincher, his gloomy reasoning is more than justified. 'Seven' is one of those films you will either want to see again and again, or see it once and think about it as little as possible.

But regardless of whether you appreciate its power to shock and upset, or if you hate it for that reason, there is no escaping the fact that this film stands strongly amongst the other great thrillers like 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'Deliverance'.

I think its main trick rests not so much in being overwhelmingly dark and disturbing - which it certainly is - but in placing three very sympathetic characters amongst the fucked up world it depicts. Freeman plays the admittedly clichéd, weary detective, nearing retirement, but he does so with his usual benevolent charm; Brad Pitt - despite annoying me in real life - turns in yet another great performance; and Gwyneth Paltrow shows that, given a decent script, she isn't just a beautiful actress but also a talented one.

And this wouldn't be a proper review if I didn't mention that Kevin Spacey steals every scene that he's in. With his infuriatingly cold disposition during what has gone down as one of the most depressing endings of all time, I have never wanted so much to jump into the movie and change the plot, so that the sick bastard fails, instead of getting everything he wants.