Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is working out his last
week in the police force and he just wants it to go peacefully. Detective Mills
(Brad Pitt) has just been transferred to his department and the two seem to
grate on each other. But when a murderer takes to killing people in line with the
seven deadly sins, the two work together to figure out who this guy is and try
to understand what it is he believes he’s doing. Trigger warning: rape, graphic
violence, suicide, mutilation. Really just don’t read ahead. Also, massive spoilers.
Gluttony is the first of the sins we’re presented with. We
have an obese man with his hands and feet bound who has been forced to eat
until he died. The pain he must have been in had to have been horrendous but
the fear of being shot must have been so strong to keep him going on.
Definitely a good idea to go with this sin first rather than Lust because if
they’d started with Lust, then they’d have taken it much more
seriously. But with this one they’re making jokes about the guy and they don’t
seem all that bothered by it, even the Captain (R. Lee Ermey) makes it seem
almost natural that someone would want to kill the guy. So Somerset and Mills
then go their separate ways, as the majority thinking is that the case is a
one-time thing. They realise pretty quickly, however, that it's just the beginning of a horrific line of murders.
Next we have Greed. A big-shot lawyer is tortured and bled
to death in his office. The murderer (Kevin Spacey) makes him cut off a pound of flesh, for
you Shakespearean types. This one is quite clever because the murderer singles
out a photo of the lawyer’s wife. She is made to look at photos of the crime
scene (nice touch, that seemed like it would be properly distressing) and she
notices that the painting in the office is upside down. The detectives then
uncover fingerprints on the wall behind it spelling out ‘Help me’, which then
leads them over to sinner number 3.
Here we have Sloth. This one embodied in a man who is a drug
dealer and child molester. While the other murders were relatively quick
affairs, this one was drawn out. The murderer had the victim tied to his bed
for an entire year. He barely fed him and I think the idea was that he drugged
him too. The man bit his own tongue off but somehow managed to survive a whole
year in this torturous desolation. But the damage to his body (and clearly to
his mind) was too severe and he dies in hospital. The patience that the
murderer had to keep this man alive (albeit barely) for a whole year is so
impressive. The other murders all take place over a short time period but this
one was different. Now, obviously it makes sense that for the Sloth sin the
death would have to be something prolonged but this does seem more special than
that. Later the murderer talks about how people just tolerate sins in everyday
life because it’s normal. Sloth is about being apathetic, which seems to
be the main issue for the murderer here. So it makes sense he would devote such
painstaking time to this sin. He even attached tons of those air freshener
trees you get in cars to the ceiling, that must’ve taken a long time. So often murders
are presented as heat of the moment but then you have ones like these, where it’s
drawn out to maximise the suffering of the victim. Chilling.
Then we have Lust. Here we have a woman who was working as a
prostitute at the time of her murder. The murderer had his weapon specially
made at a bondage gear shop; it’s your usual strap-on harness except it has a
huge knife attached to where the dildo would be. He then made a man who was the
woman’s client at the time put on this awful contraption and then forced him at
gunpoint to rape her to death. This is the murder that really stood out for me.
I mean, jesus, what a ridiculously terrifying and painful way to die. I can’t
even imagine the pain, christ alive. And the guy who was forced to rape her, he
seemed just absolutely traumatised by it. How would you even recover from that?
Fuck. The thing with this sin-murder is that she is a prostitute, she’s being
paid for this, it’s not like she’s seeking out to have lots of sex. Although,
in fairness, obviously I understand people can get into prostitution because
they do enjoy sex and want to make money from it. But I reckon that’s probably
not the case here. So her Lust sin must be in inspiring Lust in other people,
for instance, the man who was traumatised by the murder. So she’s killed for
what she does and the man has to live with what he’s done.
Pride is the next one. A woman has a bottle of sleeping
pills glued to one hand and a telephone glued to the other. The murderer cuts
up her face and cuts off her nose and gives her the option of calling for help
and having to live with this disfigurement or to take the sleeping pills and to
die there in her bed. This murder was just glossed over too quickly for me, I
thought it was fascinating. This woman chose to die rather than to live if she
wouldn’t be beautiful. I’m not even really sure what it is I find so
fascinating about that but it’s just such an interesting thing. Obviously she
was proud of her appearance but maybe she thought she had nothing else to offer
outside of it? That maybe it was her best quality? The importance we place on
physical attractiveness so often leads to fatal consequences and it always
seems odd to me. What is deemed attractive can change quite quickly over time
and is different from country to country and even just from person to person. I
just can’t believe there’s a universally agreed upon attractive quality. This
doesn’t really have anything to do with the murder but I do so like to get
sidetracked. Anyway, I wish it had been given more attention in the film.
The last two sins, Envy and Wrath were dealt with together.
The murderer goes to Mills’ apartment and spends time in his house, with his
wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). He tries to experience what it’s like to live like
Mills does, like a person who perhaps isn’t consumed with the need to kill
people who are ‘sinners’. And he says he envies him and that that’s his sin.
But in order to complete all seven, he has to get Mills to play into
Wrath. So he has a box delivered to the field where they are and Somerset opens
it and discovers Mills’ wife’s head. Somerset knows that once Mills finds out
then he’s going to kill the murderer so he tries to convince him, saying that if he
kills him then he’s won. Obviously Mills is distraught and he does kill him.
How could he not, really? I’d have done the same thing, I think anyone would.
He’s lost his wife and now probably his job since he killed a prisoner and he
looks so lost. The murderer definitely won.
Rain is such an obvious choice for films like this but it
works just so well. It made everything seem more claustrophobic in a way that I
think only rain really can, and it’s helped by the chaotic conditions in the
town, where everyone seems to be on top of each other all the time. Rain just
covers everything, you’re totally enclosed, even just with the sound of it, you
can’t escape it. And in the film, where we basically just have two characters,
it makes it seem almost more intimate. These two men are working together
closely to solve these murders and they have to do it fast. The rain makes it
seem like it’s all happening in a bubble. Then at the end of the film, it takes
place in bright sunshine in wide open fields. The case is solved, everything
has been brought out into the open. There’s no bubble anymore, it’s all there
to be scrutinised.
This film was really well done. I mean, I loved the
characters of Somerset and Mills and how their little differences are shown.
Somerset has perfectly ironed shirts, he goes to the library to read up on
relevant materials for the case, he’s calm and methodical. Mills has crushed
shirts, he gets the cliff notes on the books so he doesn’t have to read them
all, and he is short tempered and lets himself be controlled by his emotions.
They find it difficult to work together but ultimately they’re both understanding
of the other. Both seem to hold certain beliefs that are similar to the ones
the murderer professes. Somerset is sick of how apathetic people are to the
horrific crimes going on around them. Mills wants to work to
help the people see the crimes and to stop them happening. Both seem to play
into what the murderer believes; he wants the world to take notice of what’s
going on around them and to live in a better way. Going about it by torturing
and murdering people doesn’t really scream ‘this is the better way’ but he
believes he has been chosen to show the world the error of their ways.
Such a brilliant film. I love it when it’s not purely about
shock value with the blood and horrific murders, but it actually has a
psychological side to it. Just a wonderful, wonderful film. I’m going to have
to watch it again and take proper notes so I can really understand everything.
10/10
