Seven (1995 film)

Seven (stylized as SE7EN) is a 1995 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey, and Kevin Spacey. It tells the story of David Mills (Pitt), a detective who partners with the retiring William Somerset (Freeman) to track down a serial killer (Spacey) who uses the seven deadly sins as a motif in his murders.

The screenplay was influenced by the time Walker spent in New York City trying to make it as a writer. Principal photography took place in Los Angeles, with the last scene filmed near Lancaster, California. The film's budget was $33 million.

Released on September 22, 1995, by New Line Cinema, Seven was the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year, grossing over $327 million worldwide. It was well received by critics, who praised the film's darkness, brutality and themes. The film was nominated for Best Film Editing at the 68th Academy Awards, but lost to Apollo 13.

Plot
Soon-to-retire detective William Somerset is partnered with short-tempered but idealistic David Mills, who has recently moved to the city with his wife Tracy. Tracy confides to Somerset that she is pregnant and has yet to tell Mills, as she is unhappy with the city and feels it is no place to raise a child. Somerset sympathizes, having had a similar situation with his ex-girlfriend many years earlier, and advises her to tell Mills only if she plans to keep the child.

Somerset and Mills investigate a set of murders inspired by the seven deadly sins: a man forced to eat until his stomach ruptured, representing gluttony, and a defense attorney killed after a pound of flesh was taken from him, representing greed. Clues at the murder scenes lead them to a suspect's apartment, where they find a third victim, a drug dealer and child molester, strapped to a bed, emaciated but alive, representing sloth. Daily photographs of the victim, taken over a year, show the crimes were planned far in advance.

The detectives use library records to identify a John Doe and track him to his apartment. Doe flees and Mills gives chase. Doe turns to hold Mills at gunpoint for a moment before escaping. The apartment contains hundreds of notebooks revealing Doe's psychopathy, as well as a clue to another murder. The detectives arrive too late to stop a man forced to kill a prostitute by raping her with a custom-made, bladed strap-on, representing lust. The following day, they attend the scene of a fifth murder, a model whose face has been mutilated by Doe; she was given the option to call for help and live disfigured, or commit suicide by taking pills, representing pride.

As Somerset and Mills return to the police station, Doe turns himself in, covered in the blood of an unidentified victim. Doe offers to take the detectives to the final two victims and confess to the murders, but only under specific terms, or he will plead insanity. Somerset is wary, but Mills agrees.

The detectives follow Doe's directions to a remote desert location. Within minutes, a delivery van approaches. Mills holds Doe at gunpoint while Somerset intercepts the driver, who has been instructed to bring a box to them. Doe begins to taunt Mills by telling him how envious he was of his life with Tracy. Somerset opens the box and, in a sudden panic, warns Mills to stay back. Doe then says that his sin was envy, and that Tracy died as a result of this; he also states that her head is in the box, and that she was pregnant. Despite Somerset's warnings, Mills shoots Doe, representing wrath, and completing Doe's plan. Police converge and take the devastated Mills away.

Cast

 * Brad Pitt as Detective David Mills
 * Morgan Freeman as Detective Lieutenant William Somerset
 * Gwyneth Paltrow as Tracy Mills
 * Kevin Spacey as John Doe
 * 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
 * Mark Boone Junior as Greasy FBI Man
 * Michael Massee as Man in Massage Parlour Booth
 * Leland Orser as Crazed Man in Massage Parlour

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. Washington later regretted turning down the role.

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 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
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 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
Originally, Fincher planned the title sequence of the film to show Freeman's character buying a house in a remote country area and traveling back into the city. However, days before a test screening, they had yet to film the sequence and had no budget to do it in that time. Fincher approached Kyle Cooper to suggest a replacement. Cooper recognized the amount of money used to make John Doe's notebooks (created by Clive Piercy and John Sabel), and used the sequence to display them in a slideshow set to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer". The hand-drawn credits font was used to suggest that Doe had written the credits himself.

The studio liked the sequence and suggested he stay with that. Fincher instead asked Cooper to "pretend we've never met and come back and propose something else", according to Cooper. Cooper came up with a more detailed version of this photographic sequence: "The idea was that this is John Doe's job: he gets up, makes his books, plans his murders, drinks his tea." Fincher liked this approach, but cautioned Cooper "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." Cooper reworked the idea, working with Wayne Coe to create a storyboard for a live-action shot and adding in filming along with photographs of the books, new props include film reels and additional notebooks, visual effects for the title credits, and elements inspired by Doe's behavior in the movie, such as cutting his fingertips. Fincher liked this approach, and considered getting Mark Romanek, the director of the "Closer" music video to produce the sequence, but Cooper insisted he direct it. Cooper was assisted by film editor Angus Wall and cinematographer Harris Savides in making the final title sequence. The filming took two days and five further weeks to edit. The credits were hand-etched onto black scratchboard and manipulated by the camera, rather than using digital effects. The final sequence used a remix of "Closer" created by the band Coil.

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 an 80% positive rating at the film-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 71 critics with an average rating of 7.8/10. Its consensus reads: "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." James Charisma, in a list of Spacey's greatest film performances for Paste, wrote: "Spacey’s portrayal is a perfect balancing act: John Doe is detached from the murders he commits, yet deliberate and meticulous in his execution ... Unemotional yet smug. Analytical, violent, patient, impenetrable." 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.

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 comic books 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, and gave Doe a backstory. Each issue included contributions by a group of creators independent of each other. All seven issues were collected in trade paperback form, released on January 15, 2008, as SE7EN, 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