Seven

This weirdly off-kilter suspenser goes well beyond the usual police procedural or killer-on-a-rampage yarn due to a fine script, striking craftsmanship and a masterful performance by Morgan Freeman.

One can already tell that this film is on to something special during the opening credits.

While Seven lacks the cleverness of the superior "Usual Suspects," it's strong enough to hold its own against most other thrillers.

A gruesome detective-thriller about a serial killer who ices egregious offenders of the seven deadly sins, portends an unpalatable combination of formulaic writing and unmitigated nastiness.

It's a misfire--but a fascinating, magnetic misfire, a film full of first-rate talents forced into absurdity, struggling to bring believability to nonsense. [22 September 1995, Friday, p. C]

While the premise is intriguing, the movie is gluey, bumbling and singularly un-thrilling.

Not even bags of body parts, a bitten-off tongue or a man forced to cut off a pound of his own flesh keep it from being dull.

Wow, it was dark, tough, interesting and sad at the end, it's a completely unique film and I recommend it to all thriller lovers

Film był przewidywalny jednak trzymał w napięciu. Podczas oglądania czułem lęk oraz zaciekawienie jednak film ten jest trudny do przetworzenia oraz skłania do wielu przemyśleń jak to u Finchera w zwyczaju. Bardzo podobała mi się ta brudna estetyka podobna do tej z fight clubu.

Ok movie, pretty gruesome and action. I expected a lot better movie from these 2. A soon to be retired detective along witha newly transferred guy. They try to solve murders being commited by the 7 deadly sins.

Prepare yourself for an up-close-and-personal wallow in the most brutally repugnant murders imaginable. Sadists, masochists and necromancers should love it. For me it was about as enjoyable as a dive into a sewer.

'Seven' is one of the most self-defeating movies I have ever seen. Despite its pretentious attempt at pseudo-philosophy, it is remarkably shallow upon closer examination, and quickly degenerates into a quagmire of bleak nihilism and self-serving darkness which do nothing to carry the film. Main characters have redeeming qualities and are a bright spot in an otherwise extremely bleak landscape, but the ending mercilessly puts out even that tiny spark of hope in the most cruel way imaginable. In this sense, it make one wonder why that film was made in the first place and for whom - after all, its relentlessly nihilistic orientation and exploitation of vile brutality are of the ****, wearisome quality which I find difficult to believe anyone would enjoy. That's what this movie truly is - a relentless, pitiless march into the dark with no variety and no redemption. As such, we might coin a new term to describe 'Seven' and its ilk - 'cynsploitation' - stories which are dark, futile and edgy not in order to make a halfway intelligent point about anything, but to use those tropes for shock value.