For this report I choose the movie Seven. This movie was released back in 1995 and stars Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gweneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermey, John McGinley, and Kevin Spacy. Seven was directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew K. Walker. The movie begins with the usual old cop, who is about to retire, and teams up with a young, ready to take on the world cop. The first act begins promisingly, with two cops being assigned to their first case together. One is white and the other is black and they have vastly different investigative styles.
Each murder, being investigated by Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt), is based on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which are Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath, Pride and Lust. The detectives find an enormously fat man who is forced to eat himself to death-Gluttony. The detectives discover a high profile lawyer who is made to cut off a pound of flesh for Greed. They find hooker who has been killed by having sex with a man that we will just say’s wearing an apparatus on his body for Lust. A runway model is forced to choose death or disfigurement for Pride.
Sloth was a man that had been tortured for a whole year. He had been barely kept alive and his hand had been cut off for his fingerprints. He is the only victim that does not die but is a complete vegetable in such a fragile state that he would be better off dead. For envy and wrath we will come back to in a bit. The killer’s (Kevin Spacy) motivation is not to commit evil but, in a very twisted way, to set a moral lesson. This is the main root of the movie. All the characters have an extremely different view of the world. David Mills (Brad Pitt) the young, idealistic cop.
He has seen too many movies, swears too much, wears a leather jacket, and refers to himself in the company of his wife (Gweneth Paltrow) as Serpico. Mills believes that people are either good or evil or insane and that it is the responsibility of the good to root out the evil. William Somerset, (Morgan Freeman) who is about to retire, believes that absolute tolerance and indifference have become the great religion of the urban world and that “not caring” has become a way of life. His retirement is not just a gimmick, but is the culmination of his philosophy.
The differences between these two men are two sides to a moral question they debate throughout the course of the film. The deck may be stacked in the older cop’s favor however; the city in which they work is a masterpiece of gloom. The younger cop seems all the more courageous for maintaining his beliefs in the face of so much nastiness. Toward the ending of the movie they begin to understand the motives of the killer they have been chasing They realize that he, too, has addressed the same moral dilemma that they have, and has made his answer. The final scene is where it all comes together.
As the two officers bring their vigilantly to the location of his final victims and this huge moral debate Takes place in transit to the location. You can see how each of them really believes in their convictions. In this scene, they drive to a field under power lines and wait. A truck drives toward them and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) goes to meet the truck. This whole time our killer (Kevin Spacy) is talking to Mills (Brad Pitt) about how he admires Mills’ life. He goes on and on about how he wishes he had a life that pleasant. Finally he says, “I Envy your life”.
Somerset having intercepted the truck has uncovered that it is a delivery person paid to deliver a package to this spot at this time. He opens the box up and starts to yell to Mills to get away from the killer. The box, in a strange twist, contains the severed head of Mills’ pregnant wife. You must have guessed by now that Wrath comes in the form of Mills shooting our killer several times, killing him. I like this movie for many reasons. It was well-written, great twists and excellent acting. I believe it embodies a glimpse of the mind of a killer and his or her train of thought. In class we were talking about movies about serial killers.
