‘Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part...’
It’s insane to think that Seven is a perfect film and yet there is a strong argument that it is David Fincher’s third-best film after Fight Club and Zodiac… and yet here we are. Sometimes, a film becomes so embedded in popular culture that it basically becomes immortal. Seven is one of those films. Fincher is at the top of his game. Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay is genuinely one of the best ever written. The cast is uniformly incredible. There is no getting away from it ladies and gents, we are dealing with a masterpiece…
Odd couple Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) investigate a series of gruesome murders that follow the pattern of the seven deadly sins. As the rain pours on New Your City and Mills’ alienated wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) becomes ever more lonely, the two detectives find themselves trapped in their own seven circles of hell.
Watching this again for the first time in a few years, it’s hard to argue with the assertion that if anything Seven has become better with age. Fincher is a master and the grimy, washed-out vision of inner-city New York that he presents here is perfectly matched to a world-weary performance for the ages from Freeman and an electric turn from Pitt. It’s easy to forget just how good the latter was during this period of the ’90s – he is sensational here. Hot-headed, diligent, vulnerable, a mess of contradictions but a three-dimensional character in every sense. By the time Kevin Spacey turns up in one of the most memorable third-act twists of all time I was on the edge of my seat all over again as if watching the movie for the first time. It is this that makes Seven such a compelling and imposing movie. Perfect from front to back and beginning to end. Not a shot is wasted. Not a line of dialogue is tossed off. Everything fits here like an intricate and beautiful pocket watch. Without all the moving parts it simply wouldn’t work. Fincher ensures it all fits together and the result is a film that is still jaw-dropping even all these years later.
Perfection is hard to come by in any medium. In cinema, it’s nigh on impossible. Seven is a perfect movie. Flawless. No notes. It was a privilege to revisit it.