Se7en
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
David Fincher
Morgan Freeman
Brad Pitt
Gwyneth Paltrow
Kevin Spacey
Leland Orser
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Lt. William Somerset, a burnt-out veteran cop, is on the brink of retirement. Forced to train his ambitious and eager replacement, Somerset is teamed with Detective David Mills on an investigation that draws these disparate cops deeper and deeper into the twisted world of a cunning and meticulous criminal. He is methodical, exacting and grotesquely creative. He is known as John Doe and he is the most vicious serial killer alive, fashioning murders based on the seven deadly sins. As each new victim is discovered, the detectives must combine their collective experiences to track the trail of a killer bent on seeking attrition for society's sins.
Director
David Fincher
Cast
Morgan Freeman
Brad Pitt
Gwyneth Paltrow
Kevin Spacey
Leland Orser
Peter Crombie
George Christy
John Santin
Brian Evers
Tudor Sherrard
Shannon Wilcox
Gene Borkan
Richmond Arquette
Chuck A. Tamburro
John Cassini
Bob Collins
Bob Mack
Harris Savides
Sarah Hale Reinhardt
Ron Blair
Paul Eckstein
Richard Roundtree
Hawthorne James
Duffy Gaver
Beverly Burke
Lennie Loftin
Lexie Bigham
David Correla
John C. Mcginley
Martin Serene
Emily Wagner
Alfonso Freeman
Richard Portnow
Julie Araskod
Evan Miranda
Pamala Tyson
Allan Kolman
Roscoe Davidson
Reg E. Cathey
Julie Araskog
Michael Reid Mackay
Mario Di Donato
Dominique Jennings
Charline Su
Cat Mueller
Jimmy Dale Hartsell
Jim Deeth
Michael Massee
Mark Boone
Endre Hules
Harrison White
Heidi Schanz
Daniel Zacapa
Richard Schiff
Andrew Kevin Walker
Crew
Michael Adler
Peter Albiez
John L Anderson
Lafaye Baker
Nico Bally
Elinor Bardach
Kerry Barden
Anthony Barlow
Tom Barrett
Brent Beal
David Behle
Bruce Bellamy
Sandy Berumen
Jean Black
Steve Boeddeker
Mike Bonnaud
Rob Bottin
James Bowen
Marsha L Bozeman
Janet Brady
Leonard Bram
Michael W Brennan
Jack Bricker
Bob F Brown
Stephen Brown
Gary Burritt
Willie Burton
Paul Calabria
Dale Caldwell
Sean Callery
Rick Canelli
Danny Cangemi
Yin Cantor
Phyllis Carlyle
Joan Chapman
Michael Chavez
Kim B Christensen
Barry Chusid
Kim Coleman
Aisha Coley
Michael Coo
Daniel Cook
Kyle Cooper
Wendy Cox
Ian Crockett
Jeffrey Croeber
Jeff Croneweth
Whitney Crumb
Mike Cunningham
Peter Davidian
Brad Davis
Frank Davis
Howard Davis
Sandy De Crescent
Eva Marie Denst
William B Doane
Daren R. Dochterman
Francesca Dodd
Patrick Dodd
Patrick Dodd
Bert Doyo
Eric Dresser
Richard Duarte
Mitch Dubin
Brad Edmiston
Hedi El Kholti
David Emmerichs
Avy Eschenasy
James Feldman
Sarah Felpes
Malcolm Fife
Malcolm Fife
William E Fitch
Thom Floutz
Carol Folgate
George Fortmuller
Richard Francis-bruce
Chris Franco
Simon Franglen
Peter Frankfurt
Kenneth Frith
Linda Frobos
Gerald J Gates
William C. Gerrity
Tom Gibson
Emily Glatter
Cori Glazer
Adam Glick
Shawn Goldstein
Joseph A Graham
Mark Graziano
Nana Greenwald
Clay A. Griffith
Robert J Grindrod
Fred Grossman
Anette Haellmigk
Conrad W. Hall
Chris Halstead
Michael Hancock
Paul Hargrave
Sean Hargreaves
Lynn Harris
Robert Wayne Harris
Scott Harris
Rick Hart
Motoyoshi Hata
Janice Hayen
Kane Hodder
Billy Hopkins
Nancy Jencks
Nicholas C John
Joseph Johnston
Michael Alan Kahn
Al Kaminsky
Michael Kaplan
Mark S. Kaufman
Ric Keeley
Jack Keller
Darius Khondji
Greg Kimble
Henry Kingi
Ren Klyce
Ren Klyce
Ren Klyce
Ren Klyce
Dan Kolsrud
Anne Kopelson
Arnold Kopelson
Erik Kraber
Buz Kramer
Laura P Krasnow
John Kurlander
Elizabeth Lapp
Thomas Lay
Bill Leslie
Mark Levinson
Marvin E. Lewis
John Lissauer
Robert J Litt
Tom Loewy
Yvon Lucas
Robert Charles Lusted
Ed Maloney
Flint Maloney
Flint Maloney
Johnny M Martin
J. Steven Matzinger
Arthur Max
John H. Maxwell
Melodie Mcdaniel
Robin Mcdonald
Russell Mcentyre
John Mcgraham
William Travis Mckane
Dennis Mclean
Jennifer Mcnamara
Ed Medin
Robert S Mendelsohn
Mark J. Meyers
Claudio Miranda
Lindsay Mofford
Jeremy Molad
Marnie Moore
Roy Moore
Don Morgan
Leo Mouneu
Dale Myrand
Gianni Nunnari
John Nutt
Jan O'connell
Thomas J. O'connell
Margie O'malley
Becky Ochoa
Nilo Otero
Chris Pascuzzo
Daniel Ray Pemberton
Ryan K Peterson
Anthony D Petrilla
Robert A Phillips
Chuck Picerni Jr.
Chuck Picerni Jr.
Steve Picerni
Quentin A. Pierre
Craig Pinckes
Michele Platt
J Michael Popovich
Lambert Powell
Margaret Prentice
Paul Prince
Paul Prokop
Steven T Puri
Ernest Quintero
Rich Ratliff
David Reale
Jacques Rey
Robert M Rey
Vincent Reynaud
John Richards
Lucas Richman
David Rodriguez
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Se7en
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and directed by music video and commercial veteran David Fincher, Seven is a meticulously crafted film about the most meticulous serial killer since Hannibal Lecter, an insane genius who draws his inspiration from the classics: Dante, Milton, Chaucer, and in one scene, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In addition to the deadly sins gluttony, greed, sloth, greed, etc. the title plays on the seven-day countdown of veteran Detective Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) before his retirement. Somerset is smart, classically educated, and observant, a once passionate policeman who has been worn down by the horrors he's witnessed on the job. You can see the toll it has taken in his eyes and his deliberate movements in the opening scenes, as he carefully dresses for work. Always so thoughtful and poised and careful, Somerset has one quirk: he carries a switchblade. Morgan Freeman makes even his handling of the knife precise and elegant.
Brad Pitt is the hungry, ambitious detective David Mills, who has transferred from his upstate beat and brought his young wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) with him. For a hot-shot young detective, he's oblivious to just how miserable she is in this dreary, oppressive city where the rain never stops and the urban cacophony never ends. The detective partnership, a burned-out veteran who reluctantly adopts and mentors the impulsive young neophyte who isn't half as seasoned as he believes he is, is a trope to be sure, but an effective one that pays off in the climax in ways that audiences in 1995 never saw coming.
Walker, who wrote the original screenplay while working at Tower Records, pushes the script into unexpected twists. If the appropriation of Armageddon literature and tool-of-God megalomania is more clever gimmick than thematic backbone, it makes for an insidiously effective hook for a modern murder mystery. To help maintain the sense of ambiguity, Fincher kept the identity of the actor playing the killer out of the opening credits. The ploy was not to surprise the audience with some shocking revelation, but merely to keep the audience as off-balance as the characters.
"I don't understand this place anymore," explains Somerset when asked why he's quitting the force. The diseased campaign of John Doe, executing sinners in excruciating ways while the world barely notices what's going on around them, only proves his point. But Fincher is careful to never let us see the murders, only the crime scenes, and even the victims are discreetly (if grotesquely) shown. He suggests the gruesome dimensions of the torturous murders with isolated details and morbid flourishes and lets the imagination of the viewers take it from there. When we're told that one victim, a veritable living corpse who looks more mummy than man, had "chewed off his own tongue long ago," there is no need for further visualization.
The sensibility is established in the creepy, unsettling opening credits by Kyle Cooper. Set to the harsh and distorted strains of Trent Reznor's music, the scratched and slashed-up shots of weird photos and pages of text being marked up and blacked out (ostensibly the research activities of our serial killer) jitter and stutter and seem to tear at themselves as they unfold on the screen. In Fincher's own words, it was his attempt to "pictorially represent aberrant thinking," and the effect, even after years of copycat credits borrowing the sensibility and the techniques, is discomforting and unnerving. Fincher returns to those images and scribblings when the detectives stumble upon John Doe's apartment and find room after room of plans and photos and a veritable library of notebooks filled with scores of notes crammed with tiny, neat writing. Fincher and his collaborators borrowed such details as these from the personal effects left behind by some of the more notorious real life serial killers.
The real star of Seven, however, is the gloom and doom of the setting: an unidentified blight of a modern city. Shot in Los Angeles on locations chosen by their resemblance to New York, manipulated to look perpetually gray and overcast, pelted with constant rain and drizzle, and accompanied by the unending urban ambience of industrial noise and never-ending traffic, it's a step away from the unending night of Blade Runner (1982). In the words of production designer Arthur Max, Fincher "wanted a sense of collapse and decay, things weren't working and society was breaking down, so visually the idea was to texture the world with a corrosion that reflected the moral decay around them." The effort to create that atmosphere bled over into the real world, according to Morgan Freeman: "The set was dark and unhealthy," he remarked in an interview. "The director, David Fincher, and others developed a chronic cough because of the water and mineral oil that was blown into the air to create the murky atmosphere."
Much of the film is set in run-down apartments in seedy slums, gloomy places with more clutter than light. They look as if they were lit with ten watt bulbs, with the cold blast of hazy winter light through the grimy windows making it seem all the more dark. The characters live in a perpetual twilight, the visual reflection of the moral world in which Mills seems to think he can make a difference. Somerset has long since given up on that fantasy. By the end of Seven he's handed one more reason to retire.
Producers: Phyllis Carlyle and Arnold Kopelson
Director: David Fincher
Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker
Cinematography: Darius Khondji
Art Direction: Gary Wissner
Music: Howard Shore
Film Editing: Richard Francis-Bruce
Cast: Brad Pitt (Detective David Mills), Morgan Freeman (Detective. Lt. William Somerset), Gwyneth Paltrow (Tracy Mills), R. Lee Ermey (Police Captain), Richard Roundtree (District Attorney Martin Talbot), Kevin Spacey (John Doe).
C-127m. Letterboxed.
by Sean Axmaker
Se7en
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Kevin Spacey was a co-winner, along with Ed Harris, of the Broadcast Film Critics Association's 1995 award for Best Supporting Actor. Spacey was cited for his performances in "Swimming With Sharks" (USA/1994), "Outbreak" (USA/1995), "The Usual Suspects" (USA/1995) and "Seven" (USA/1995).
Kevin Spacey won the National Board of Review's 1995 award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in "Seven" (USA/1995) and "The Usual Suspects" (USA/1995).
Kevin Spacey won the New York Film Critics Circle's 1995 award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in "Seven" (USA/1995), "The Usual Suspects" (USA/1995), "Outbreak" (USA/1995) and "Swimming with Sharks" (USA/1994).
Winner of the 1995 award for Best Cinematography from the Chicago Film Critics Association.
Released in United States Fall September 22, 1995
Re-released in United States December 25, 1995
Re-released in United States December 29, 1995
Released in United States on Video March 26, 1996
Released in United States September 1997
Shown at Deauville Film Festival (Freeman Tribute) September 5-14, 1997.
Second feature for acclaimed music video director David Fincher who marked his feature directorial debut with "Alien3" (USA/1992).
Completed shooting March 10, 1995.
Began shooting December 12, 1994.
Released in United States Fall September 22, 1995
Re-released in United States December 25, 1995 (Los Angeles)
Re-released in United States December 29, 1995 (New York City)
Released in United States on Video March 26, 1996
Released in United States September 1997 (Shown at Deauville Film Festival (Freeman Tribute) September 5-14, 1997.)
Darius Khondji was nominated in the feature film category of the Outstanding Achievement Awards (1995) sponsored by the American Society of Cinematographers.