Seven (1995 film)

Seven
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Fincher
Produced by	Arnold Kopelson Phyllis Carlyle
Written by	Andrew Kevin Walker
Starring	Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman Kevin Spacey John C. McGinley Gwyneth Paltrow
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Edited by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	September 22, 1995 (1995-09-22)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$33 million
Box office	$327.3 million

Seven (sometimes stylized as SE7EN) is a 1995 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher, and stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey and Kevin Spacey. The film was based on a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker.

Plot

In an unnamed American city, soon-to-be-retiring detective William R. Somerset (Freeman) is partnered with short-tempered-but-idealistic one David Mills (Pitt), who recently transferred to the department, moving to the city with his wife Tracy (Paltrow). Mills introduces Somerset to Tracy, after which Somerset becomes her confidant. Tracy is displeased with the city and feels it is no place to raise a child, something she has not yet told Mills about. Somerset sympathizes with her, having a similar situation with his ex-girlfriend many years earlier, and advises her to only tell Mills if she plans on keeping the child.

Somerset and Mills investigate a string of murders tied to a serial killer. The first victim is an obese man forced to eat until his stomach exploded. The second was a rich attorney who died from both fatal bloodletting and the removal of a pound of flesh. They find clues that tie the two cases together, leading them to a third possible victim's apartment. There, they find the victim, a known drug dealer and child molester, still alive but strapped to a bed and emaciated, with a series of pictures of the restrained victim, taken over the last year. They come to recognize the cases are connected by the seven deadly sins, the three known victims representing gluttony, greed and sloth. The photos also show their killer has been planning these deaths for some time.

Somerset and Mills identify a man named John Doe (Spacey), who has checked out many library books on the deadly sins and flees when they go to his apartment, and Mills gives chase. Doe eventually corners and holds Mills at gunpoint, but after a few moments, drops the gun and escapes. At Doe's apartment, they find hundreds of handwritten notebooks of Doe's irrational judgement, and clues leading to a fourth victim. They arrive too late to prevent the death of the lust victim: a prostitute killed by an unwilling man wearing a bladed S&M device on his genitals, forced by Doe to simultaneously rape and kill her, severely traumatizing him. They are alerted to their pride victim, a supermodel that had her face mutilated by Doe, and given the option by her killer either to call 9-1-1 or commit suicide by pills.

Later, Somerset and Mills are approached by Doe, his hands covered in blood and giving himself up for arrest. They discover Doe has been removing the skin on his fingers to avoid leaving behind prints, while the blood is that of a yet-to-be-identified victim. Doe, through his lawyer, offers to show the detectives to that victim and confess to the murders under very specific terms, or he will otherwise plead insanity. Somerset is wary, but Mills agrees.

The two drive Doe out to a remote desert region, where a delivery van approaches them. Mills holds Doe at gunpoint while Somerset goes to intercept the driver, who was instructed to bring a box out to them. As Somerset recovers the box and sends away the driver, Doe begins telling Mills about how jealous he is of Mills' life and marriage to Tracy and their coming child, making Mills antagonistic. Somerset opens the box, and in horror, tells Mills to stay back and not listen to Doe. Doe continues to goad Mills as Mills frantically asks what is in the box. Doe reveals that he was so jealous of Mills, that he killed Tracy and her head is in the box. Doe wants to be killed as to become the victim of envy and that by exacting vengeance on him, Mills would become wrath. Doe pulls the final straw by calmly revealing that he had raped Tracy before killing her. Shocked, Mills angrily, despite Somerset's attempt to stop him, kills Doe by repeatedly shooting him with the gun. Police converge and take a devastated Mills away. Later, Somerset leaves the police department in a voice-over, he paraphrases a quote by Ernest Hemingway: "'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for'...I agree with the second part."

Cast

• Morgan Freeman as Detective Lieutenant William Somerset, David Mills's pragmatic and down-to-earth mentor
• Brad Pitt as Detective David Mills, Somerset's cocky and sarcastically blunt second-in-command
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Tracy Mills, David's wife
• Kevin Spacey as John Doe, the psychopathic, delusional and twisted serial killer who is obsessed with the Seven Deadly Sins
• R. Lee Ermey as Police Captain
• John C. McGinley as SWAT team leader California
• Richard Roundtree as District Attorney Martin Talbot
• Richard Schiff as Mark Swarr
• Julie Araskog as Mrs. Gould
• Mark Boone Junior as Greasy FBI Man
• John Cassini as Officer Davis
• Reg E. Cathey as Coroner
• Peter Crombie as Dr. O'Neill
• Hawthorne James as George
• Michael Massee as Man in Massage Parlour Booth
• Leland Orser as Crazed Man in Massage Parlour
• Richard Portnow as Dr. Beardsley
• Daniel Zacapa as Detective Taylor
• Alfonso Freeman as Fingerprint Tech
• Harris Savides as 911 Operator
• Andrew Kevin Walker as Dead Man
• Richmond Arquette as Delivery Man

Production

Pre-production

The primary influence for the film's screenplay came from Andrew Kevin Walker's time spent in New York City while trying to make it as a screenwriter. "I didn't like my time in New York, but it's true that if I hadn't lived there I probably wouldn't have written Seven." He envisioned actor William Hurt as Somerset and named the character after his favorite author, W. Somerset Maugham.

Jeremiah S. Chechik was attached to direct at one point. During pre-production, Al Pacino was considered for the Somerset role, but he decided to do City Hall. Denzel Washington and Sylvester Stallone turned down the role of Mills.

The ending of the screenplay, with the head in the box, was originally part of an earlier draft that New Line had rejected, instead opting for an ending that involved more traditional elements of a detective thriller film with more action-oriented elements. But when New Line sent David Fincher the screenplay to review for his interest in the project, they accidentally sent him the original screenplay with the head-in-the-box ending. At the time, Fincher had not read a script for a year and a half since after the frustrating experience of making Alien 3; he said, "I thought I'd rather die of colon cancer than do another movie". Fincher eventually agreed to direct Seven because he was drawn to the script, which he found to be a "connect-the-dots movie that delivers about inhumanity. It's psychologically violent. It implies so much, not about why you did but how you did it". He found it more a "meditation on evil" rather than a "police procedural".

When New Line realized that they had sent Fincher the wrong draft, the President of Production, Michael De Luca, met with Fincher and noted that there was internal pressure to retain the revised version; De Luca stated that if Fincher promised to produce the movie, they would be able to stay with the head-in-a-box ending. Despite this, producer Kopelson refused to allow the film to include the head-in-a-box scene. Actor Pitt joined Fincher in arguing for keeping this original scene, noting that his previous film Legends of the Fall had its emotional ending cut after negative feedback from test audiences, and refusing to do Seven unless the head-in-the-box scene remained.

Filming

Filming took place in Los Angeles, California.

Fincher approached making Seven like a "tiny genre movie, the kind of movie Friedkin might have made after The Exorcist." He worked with cinematographer Darius Khondji and adopted a simple approach to the camerawork, which was influenced by the television show COPS, "how the camera is in the backseat peering over people's shoulder". Fincher allowed Walker on the set while filming for on-the-set rewrites. According to the director, "Seven is the first time I got to carry through certain things about the camera – and about what movies are or can be".

The crowded urban streets filled with noisy denizens and an oppressive rain that always seems to fall without respite were integral parts of the film, as Fincher wanted to show a city that was "dirty, violent, polluted, often depressing. Visually and stylistically, that's how we wanted to portray this world. Everything needed to be as authentic and raw as possible." To this end, Fincher turned to production designer Arthur Max to create a dismal world that often eerily mirrors its inhabitants. "We created a setting that reflects the moral decay of the people in it", says Max. "Everything is falling apart, and nothing is working properly." The film's brooding, dark look was achieved through a chemical process called bleach bypass, wherein the silver in the film stock was not removed, which in turn deepened the dark, shadowy images in the film and increased its overall tonal quality.

The 'head in a box' ending continued to worry the studio after filming was completed. After the first cut of the film was shown to the studio, they attempted to mitigate the bleakness of the ending by replacing Mills' wife's head with that of a dog, or by not having Mills fire on John Doe. However, both Fincher and Pitt continued to fight for the original ending. The final scenes of Mills being taken away and Somerset's quote from Ernest Hemingway were filmed by Fincher after initial filming was complete as a way to placate the studio (the original intention was for the film to suddenly end after Mills shot John Doe).

Title sequence

On the film's title sequence, Fincher has said:

The sequence for Se7en did very important non-narrative things; in the original script there was a title sequence that had Morgan Freeman buying a house out in the middle of nowhere and then travelling back on a train. He was making his way back to the unnamed city from the unnamed suburban sprawl, and that's where the title was supposed to be—"insert title sequence here"—but we didn't have the money to do that. We also lacked the feeling of John Doe, the villain, who just appeared 90 minutes into the movie. It was oddly problematic, you just needed a sense of what these guys were up against. Kyle Cooper, the designer of the title sequence, came to me and said, "You know, you have these amazing books that you spent tens of thousands of dollars to make for the John Doe interior props. I'd like to see them featured." And I said, "Well, that would be neat, but that's kind of a 2D glimpse. Figure out a way for it to involve John Doe, to show that somewhere across town somebody is working on some really evil shit. I don't want it to be just flipping through pages, as beautiful as they are." So Kyle came up with a great storyboard, and then we got Angus Wall and Harris Savides—Harris to shoot it and Angus to cut it—and the rest, as they say, is internet history.

Reception

Box office

Seven was released on September 22, 1995, in 2,441 theaters where it grossed US$13.9 million on its opening weekend. It went on to gross $100.1 million in North America and $227.1 million in the rest of the world for a total of $327.3 million, making Seven the seventh-highest grossing film in 1995. The film also spent 4 consecutive weeks in the top spot at the U.S. box office in 1995.

Critical response

The film was well received by critics and holds a 80% positive rating at the film-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 68 critics with an average rating of 7.6 out of 10. Its consensus reading: "A brutal, relentlessly grimy shocker with taut performances, slick gore effects, and a haunting finale." The film has a rating of 65 on Metacritic based on 22 reviews.

Gary Arnold, in The Washington Times, praised the cast: "The film's ace in the hole is the personal appeal generated by Mr. Freeman as the mature, cerebral cop and Mr. Pitt as the young, headstrong cop. Not that the contrast is inspired or believable in itself. What gets to you is the prowess of the co-stars as they fill out sketchy character profiles". Sheila Johnston, in her review for The Independent, praised Freeman's performance: "the film belongs to Freeman and his quiet, carefully detailed portrayal of the jaded older man who learns not to give up the fight". In his review for Sight and Sound, John Wrathall wrote, "Seven has the scariest ending since George Sluizer's original The Vanishing...and stands as the most complex and disturbing entry in the serial killer genre since Manhunter". In his "Great Movies" list review, film critic Roger Ebert commented on Fincher's direction: "None of his films is darker than this one."

Accolades

New Line Cinema re-released Seven in Westwood, Los Angeles, California on Christmas Day and in New York City on December 29, 1995, in an attempt to generate Academy Award nominations for Freeman, Pitt, and Fincher, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

American Film Institute lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains
  • John Doe - Nominated Villain
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Mystery Film

Year	Ceremony	Category	Recipients	Result
1995	68th Academy Awards	Best Film Editing	Richard Francis-Bruce	Nominated
	49th British Academy Film Awards	Best Screenplay - Original	Andrew Kevin Walker	Nominated
	1996 MTV Movie Awards	Best Movie	Seven	Won
		Most Desirable Male	Brad Pitt	Won
		Best On-Screen Duo	Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman	Nominated
		Best Villain	Kevin Spacey	Won

Home media

For the DVD release, Seven was remastered and presented in the widescreen format, preserving the 2.40:1 aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. Audio options include Dolby Digital EX 5.1, DTS ES Discrete 6.1, and Stereo Surround Sound.

The Seven DVD features four newly recorded, feature-length audio commentaries featuring the stars and other key contributors to the film, who talk about their experiences making Seven.

This DVD is also compatible with DVD-ROM drives. Disc One features a printable screenplay with links to the film. The Blu-ray Disc was released September 14, 2010.

Novelization and comic books

In 1995, a novelization with the same title was written by Anthony Bruno based on the original film.

Between September 2006 and October 2007, a series of seven publications were published by Zenescope Entertainment with each of the seven issues dedicated to one of the seven sins. It told the story from the perspective of John Doe rather than the two homicide detectives as in the film. Each issue included contributions by a group of creators independent of each other. All seven parts became part of a comic book that was released on January 15, 2008 by as SE7EN book edited by David Seidman and Ralph Tedesco.

Soundtrack

The opening credit music is a spliced sample of an uncredited remix of the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer", available as "Closer (Precursor)", remixed by Coil, on the "Closer" single. The song during the end credits is David Bowie's song "The Hearts Filthy Lesson", found on his album Outside. The film's original score is by Howard Shore.

1. "In the Beginning" – The Statler Brothers
2. "Guilty" – Gravity Kills
3. "Trouble Man" – Marvin Gaye
4. "Speaking of Happiness" – Gloria Lynne – written by Buddy Scott & Jimmy Radcliffe
5. "Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 Air" – written by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Stuttgarter Kammerorchester / Karl Münchinger
6. "Love Plus One" – Haircut One Hundred
7. "I Cover the Waterfront" – Billie Holiday
8. "Now's the Time" – Charlie Parker
9. "Straight, No Chaser" – Thelonious Monk (Taken from Monk in Tokyo)
10. "Portrait of John Doe" – Howard Shore
11. "Suite from Seven" – Howard Shore

Cultural influences

Samay: When Time Strikes, a Bollywood film, was inspired by this film.

See also

• Seven deadly sins

External links

• Seven at IMDb
• Seven at the TCM Movie Database
• Seven at AllMovie
• Seven at Box Office Mojo
• Seven at Rotten Tomatoes
• Seven at Metacritic