If John Doe's head splits open and a UFO should fly out, I want you to have expected it.
A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( * * * * * ) DVD Rating: ( * * * * * )
The New Line collectors edition of Seven is one of the best DVDs ever made. Not only do you get one of the greatest horror crime movies but you get it in one of the best DVD transfers ever done. In a world of filth and trash, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman track down one of the worst serial killers in history. Extreme attention to every gory detail of the sets, the dialog, and the characters build up a horror crime drama all the way to the tightly knit ending. It's great.
I had the extreme pleasure of taking a young woman to see Seven on our first date. During the movie I was reminded of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver taking his dream girl to see a porno movie simply because he didn't know any better. There I was, wondering how I was going to get my arm around this girl while in front of us we watched two detectives run their pencils through a bucket of puke from an 800 pound guy who ate himself to death. It was probably one of my most uncomfortable date movies ever, the first being Natural Born Killers. From now on I don't take a girl to see anything other than Snow Dogs and even then I preview it myself beforehand for any uncomfortable fart or leg humping jokes. Regardless of the uncomfortable situation, I was still pretty impressed with Seven. Granted, the first thing that came to mind was the horrific imagery more felt than seen, but now years later I find my mind twisting and turning just how well laid out a movie this was.
The real strength of Seven, once you get past the psychological horror, is in the depth of characters. One could look at the two characters as parallels from Lethal Weapon if it weren't for the attention paid to their backgrounds and motivation for their actions. We are given a few lines of dialog and even a couple of scenes that breathe a lot of life into what otherwise would have been Dragnet meets Friday the 13th. Even the wife of the younger detective, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, is given a great amount of depth with only two scenes. Kevin Spacey gives a horrific performance just under that of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.
The DVD for Seven is one of the best ever made. It is a two disc set that includes a 2.35 to 1 16x9 enhanced transfer completely remastered from the original print. It includes both a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and a DTS ES soundtrack. There are three commentary tracks and a disc full of extras that seems pretty thin until you realize that every one of them has a voice track of the crew. I found the home theater mastering documentary to be particularly educational describing how much work they put into the DVD release. It was very apparent that David Fincher saw the DVD release as true medium of his original movie, the medium it would live on in. With all three commentaries and all the material on the second disc, there is about eight hours of worthwhile material for $22. One could have a full day exploration of this reference quality DVD.
I was pretty excited to watch Seven again after all these years. Each layer of this movie can be peeled back to reveal another layer of depth, from the original story to the characters to the sets and costumes to the cinematography. Its a terror of a movie with not one moment of joy or happiness save a scene laughing about how much life sucks in a brand new apartment under a subway. Yet Seven captures the characters and the story better than most any movie like it. The DVD transfer is one of the best ever done. This is one to buy and be proud of.
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