Film Review through a criminal justice lens. (Seven)

Se7en is a 1995 film directed by David Fincher. It is categorized into genres of crime and thriller. The principal actors in the movie are; Morgan Freeman who plays detective William Somerset, Brad Pitt who plays detective David Mills, Kevin Spacey who is the serial killer and Gwyneth Paltrow who plays Tracy Mills, Detective David Mills’ wife (Se7en, 1995).
William Somerset, a veteran detective who is seven days away from his retirement, teams up with a young and rather emotional David Mills, who is a very unusual occurrence requested to replace Somerset, in investigating a chain of killings. These killings were fronted by the murder of a fat guy who was tied to a chair and forced to eat to death. These unusual killings are made with the motive of punishing people who commit the seven deadly sins which are; gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath (InDepthInfo, 2018).
Detective William Somerset is portrayed as poetic and wise. This can be pointed back to his many years of experience. Unlike Mills, Morgan knows how to control his emotions especially temper. His patience and humility are some of his pillars of success in his line of work. However, long years of dwelling in this dark city seem to have eaten into his existence reducing him into a lonely aging bachelor.
It is striking how the killer drives the investigation and is given a voice in the film. He leads the detectives to where he wants them to go. First, he hands himself over to the authorities covered in blood.

Through his lawyer, the killer blackmails the detectives by stating that he will plead insanity unless the two detectives and only the two agree to accompany him to the location where he will reveal the last two of his seven victims. He later jeopardizes Mills by telling him that he’s only alive because he spared him. As the movie winds up, the killer confesses to the sixth deadly sin, envy. He says, “Because I envy your normal life, it seems envy is my sin,” this is after confessing to sexually molesting and eventually killing detective Mills’ wife, Tracy. Before he is shot six times, he urges detective mills, “become vengeance David, become wrath.” Pushing him to commit the seventh deadly sin, wrath. According to Somerset, the killer had won by successfully leading Mills to self-destruction as he’ll be charged with killing a suspect and eventually receive punishment for the seventh deadly sin.
Furthermore, the kind of technology in this movie points out to a backdated time when technology was not very much advanced. Estimated as the 1940s. For instance, fingerprint scanning takes a whole night prompting the two detectives to sleep in the office. The use of typewriters and the kind of telephones also enhance the film’s historical setting regarding technology.
The significance of the number seven can hardly pass unnoticed in this film. At the beginning of the film, Morgan Freeman has only seven days left of his career. This is followed by “a chain of seven murders based on the seven deadly sins.” Further, the package to detective mills is delivered at seven o’clock as strictly directed by the killer; this is also the time the two detectives accompanied by the killer arrived at the scene. Finally, Mills fires six rounds of ammunition at the killer, adding the one bullet he had fired earlier, the sum of bullets shot in the movie totals to seven given that Somerset had never fired a bullet.
The lighting of the movie is designed to show the gloomy state of the city. The lighting is too dark, and the only elements of light are the detectives’ flashlights which may as well stand for hope since they are seen or rather given a chance to solve and end the evils in the city. Sombreness is further portrayed by the constant rains in the city that seem to make the situation more difficult for the criminal justice practitioners. When the detectives drive outside the city, it is noted that the town is surrounded by an ugly desert, further adding to the draconian bounds of this city.
Se7en tends to justify crime to some extent. Somerset realizes that the killer is preaching through his killings. The killer, “John Doe,” claims that people’s attention is not earned by just a tap on the shoulder but by hitting them with a sledgehammer. This justifies his crime as a way of drawing people’s attention to the sins of the society. The film falls short of recreating the aspect of criminal justice in that, the killer wins. In this case, the difference I would have made was ensuring that the killer is charged with his crimes and his victims served with the justice they deserve.
In conclusion, the criminal justice system has been portrayed poorly in many instances in this film. The most outstanding example is when Somerset visits the precinct late in the night and finds officers playing poker instead of patrolling the city. The weakness of the criminal justice system is again seen when the detectives are unable to stop the killer from committing further killings even after realizing that he will commit seven killings. The fact that a person has been tormented for one year without anybody noticing further shows the incapacity of the criminal justice system.

Reference
InDepthInfo. (2018). The Seven Deadly Sins. Retrieved from http://www.indepthinfo.com/articles/seven-deadly-sins.htmSe7en. (1995). [DVD] Directed by David Fincher. USA: New Line Cinema.