Se7en

One of my friends has been trying to get me to see this for maybe a decade now. I'm not sure why it took so long. David Fincher's Fight Club is one of my favorite movies. Maybe being repeatedly told to see it was subconsciously pushing me away. Whatever it was, it's definitely a good film. It's part crime movie, part suspense. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are a couple detectives in a strange city where everything looks run-down and it always rains. Pitt just moved to town to replace Freeman, who's set to retire at the end of the week, but a string of related murders start showing up, pointing to a serial killer obsessed with his own sense of justice and the seven deadly sins. It's a slow burn as they examine the aftermath of his painstaking, disturbing work and try to find connections that will lead to him before he finishes the job. It's clear that he's toying with them, almost challenging them to catch him while he goes about his business. As a look at the possible endpoint of what a human mind might be capable of putting together, it's intriguing and chilling at the same time.

In between checking crime scenes, the movie takes some time to develop the detectives when they're off the job. Pitt comes home to his wife played by Gwyneth Paltrow and their three dogs, while Freeman goes to the library, rarely able to stop thinking about work. There are a couple scenes where Paltrow confides in Freeman, the only man besides her husband she knows to turn to in a new city that she hates. It's unclear at first what the point of this stuff is besides preventing the entire movie from being a creepy detective story, but as the depths of the killer's horrifying plan are unraveled the truth becomes clear. Kevin Spacey has a good role, one of the more interesting in his career (which was nice to see, because it's been a while since I've seen him do a whole lot). It all builds to a huge downer of an ending, one that the studio fought against but ultimately had to happen for the movie to totally work. I should be more diligent about seeing Fincher's films, because he's certainly one of the most interesting directors of the last couple decades.