I can still remember going to see this film in the cinema more than twenty years ago. It is one of those films that has always stayed with me. And what’s strange it that although I don’t think I have rewatched it too many times since then1 I remember so much of it. For me this is odd. I don’t have a great memory for specific scenes or dialogue unless I’ve rewatched a film multiple times. But so much of Se7ven was so familiar to me, I remembered so much of it.
It is still a great film.
It’s grim and dark and brutal, but at the same time I don’t think that it ever glamourises the violence on screen. Indeed much of the violence isn’t actually on screen at all, but the aftermath is. The violence is all the more horrific because we can see the results.
It has a great performance from Freeman as the weary about to retire Somerset. And Pitt is just as good in his role as not really a rookie Mills. I could criticise it for having nothing for Gwyneth Paltrow to do, I mean, does she do anything apart from sleep? She isn’t bad in the role, it is just a poor role, very much a supporting one. There are only two characters in this film, Somerset and Mills. And the city itself I suppose, grim and threatening and full of violence and despair, it is more than simply a setting.
If you haven’t ever seen Se7en, and I’m sure some of you are too young to have been alive when it was released, and maybe you haven’t come across it since, go watch it now. And even if you have seen it, why not give it another go.
once or twice tops I’d guess ↩
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