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Se7en
Directed by	David Fincher
Produced by	Arnold Kopelson Phyllis Carlyle
Written by	Andrew Kevin Walker
Starring	Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman Gwyneth Paltrow Kevin Spacey John C. McGinley
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Editing by	Richard Francis-Bruce
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	September 22, 1995 [1]
Running time	127 min.
Country	United States
Budget	$30,000,000[1]
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Se7en (also known as Seven) is an American 1995 BAFTA nominated crime film directed by David Fincher. The story follows two detectives, one retiring and one his replacement, jointly investigating a series of ritualistic murders inspired by the seven deadly sins. Over the course of the investigation they attempt to track down the killer before he has a chance to murder his seven victims. The film was written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as the detectives and Kevin Spacey as the killer.

Taglines:

• Seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die.
• Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 Gluttony 1.2 Greed 1.3 Sloth 1.4 Lust 1.5 Pride 1.6 Envy 1.7 Wrath 2 Cast 3 John Doe 3.1 Religious imagery 3.2 Expanded universe 4 Production 4.1 Alternate endings 5 Reception and awards 5.1 DVD 6 Comic book 7 Parody 8 Soundtrack 9 In popular culture 10 See also 11 Footnotes

Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a week away from retirement after many years of dealing with the destitution and apathy bred within the grimy and forlorn city. During this time, he is partnered with Detective Mills (Brad Pitt), an arrogant but inexperienced detective who just transferred into the department from somewhere outside the metropolis. The two men are at odds with each other almost immediately; Mills is brash, temperamental, and lets his anger get the better of him, in stark contrast to Somerset's analytical and introspective personality and methods.

Their first assignment together is at a crime scene in a filthy, cockroach-infested apartment in which an extremely obese man lies dead, face-down in a bowl of spaghetti. He is bound with barbed wire at his ankles and wrists, and there is a bucket of vomit under the table. The pathologist later verifies that the man was force-fed an enormous quantity of food, then kicked in the side, rupturing his stomach and causing an internal hemorrhage. The first piece of evidence that seemed to indicate a killer with a certain motive was a set of receipts of the food, showing that the killer took multiple trips to the store.

Somerset voices his doubts to their captain about Mills' readiness to handle the gluttony case, and the next day Mills takes on a new case, the gruesome murder of a prominent lawyer named Eli Gould. Gould was made to excise a pound of his own flesh, a reference to a demand made by Shylock from The Merchant of Venice; written on the floor in Gould's blood is the word GREED. After Somerset discovers the word GLUTTONY written in grease on the wall behind the refrigerator back at the first crime scene, he begins to suspect that the two crimes are related, and tells Mills and the captain that there will likely be five more murders, each patterned after one of the remaining five of the seven deadly sins.

Mills' wife Tracy (played by Paltrow) invites Somerset to their new house for a late supper, and working together find a large set of fingerprints and handprints at the site of Gould's murder which spell out "HELP ME"; the prints, hidden behind a painting, which Mrs. Gould notices has been turned upside-down, belong to a known sexual predator and drug dealer who Somerset believes is not the killer.

Somerset is proved right when the man is found tied to his bed, alive but suffering from severe mental and physical deterioration after spending a year completely immobile. Above the bed, SLOTH is written in excrement.The killer had left a pile of photos and various bodily fluid samples from over the year the victim was tied in bed, indicating that the killer was mocking the detectives for not being able to pick up on the clues quickly enough. At this point, Tracy secretly meets with Somerset and tells him about her pregnancy.

With the investigation going nowhere, Somerset pays a contact in the FBI to print out the list of names on the government database of "flagged" library books, books in which Somerset's research indicates the killer would be interested. Through the list, they come up with a list of possible matches, one of which is named "Jonathan Doe" (a variant of the John Doe name used for anonymous crime victims). When they visit Doe's apartment, Doe arrives and opens fire at them down the hall, starting an open-fire chase. Later, Doe manages to strike Mills, but is able to escape.

The detectives ravage through Doe's apartment, finding the hands of the "Sloth" victim in the refrigerator, shelves of journals and paparazzi-type photographs of potential victims. The detectives are soon paged to the site of the next victim (the prostitute). LUST is carved into the door of a room; inside the room is the body of the prostitute, the police, and a man seemingly in shock, screaming, "Get this thing off of me." Back at the station, the badly shaken man says that the killer forced him at gunpoint to strap on a blade and have a forced sexual intercourse with the prostitute.

A fifth victim turns up the next day after a phone call from John Doe to police headquarters. A model is found dead in her own bedroom. Doe cut off her nose—"to spite her face"— then offered her a choice of living with her disfigurement or suicide, by gluing a bottle of sleeping pills to one hand (from which she could overdose) and a phone to the other (to call for help). By choosing suicide, she accedes to the sin of PRIDE, which is written in blood (or lipstick) on the headboard of the bed.

Mills and Somerset return to police headquarters, where in the lobby they are confronted by a man whose hands and shirt are covered in blood. This man is soon confirmed to be Doe (Kevin Spacey). Through his lawyer, Doe offers to confess to all of the murders, but only if he is allowed to escort the detectives to a scene where Doe says two more bodies will be found. Refusal of this offer, Doe's attorney threatens, will lead to a plea of insanity. Mills decides he wants the full confession.

When they arrive at Doe's prearranged location, a delivery van soon arrives. Somerset stops the van several hundred yards from their location and confronts the driver, who says that he was to deliver a box to their location. The box is addressed to Mills, but Somerset decides to open it. He recoils from the box in horror, and yells to Mills, who is struggling to ignore Doe's comments, to put his gun down and to not come near the box.

As Somerset runs back to Mills and Doe, Doe reveals to Mills that he had visited Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) after Mills left for work and tried to "play husband." The independently wealthy Doe envied the fruits of a common man's life and is thus guilty of ENVY. Doe discloses that he killed Tracy, then adds, "I took a souvenir...her pretty head." Doe then taunts Mills when he realizes that Mills was unaware of Tracy's pregnancy.

Enraged, horrified, and grief-stricken, Mills dramatically contemplates killing Doe. Somerset tries to stop him, arguing that Doe's revelations only stand if he is killed for his sin of Envy and if Mills is the one who kills him and so becomes the embodiment of WRATH. "If you kill him, he will win," says Somerset. However, the distraught and emotional Mills shoots Doe in the head, empties his gun into Doe's body, and, from the viewpoint of the helicopter watching them, is shown walking away from Somerset and Doe's corpse in the direction of the box.

In the next scene, Mills is seen being taken away in a police vehicle. The captain asks Somerset, "Where are you going to be?" Somerset wearily replies, "I'll be around," suggesting that he will not go through with his long-awaited retirement. The film closes with a short voiceover by Somerset: "Hemingway once wrote: ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for’. I agree with the second part."

• Brad Pitt: Detective David Mills
• Morgan Freeman: Detective Lt. William Somerset
• Kevin Spacey:John Doe
• Gwyneth Paltrow: Tracy Mills
• R. Lee Ermey: Police Captain
• John C. McGinley: California

Se7en character
John Doe
Birth name	Jonathan Doe
Gender	Male
Race	Caucasian
M.O.	Torture reflecting the victim's major sin
Occupation(s)	Photographer, self appointed religious enforcer
Current status:	Deceased

The viewer is told comparatively little about the character of John Doe. The Police Captain describes Doe as "independently wealthy, well-educated and totally insane," but when Somerset tries to tease any personal information out of him, Doe claims that who he is "doesn't matter." Doe has created a completely blank identity for himself; there are no clues to his real identity in his apartment, his bank account was started with cash and he has no employment records; a scene during the opening credits shows him blanking out a picture of a young boy's face with a black marker. Doe is only really defined by his crimes and his religious mania, as apparent in his apartment. His apartment, and particularly the 2000 notebooks he has compiled over the years, give the biggest clues to who he is.

Doe's apartment is a shrine to his obsession with sin and revulsion at the world. His door carries multiple bolts and locks, his windows are blacked out, and there are religious icons and drawings everywhere. There is an air of asceticism about it, with his basic bed and the red neon cross above it. Doe seems to be a manic obsessive (he collects aspirin bottles and he details every part of his life in his notebooks). The list of flagged books Somerset and Mills procure includes St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote on the seven deadly sins in his Summa Theologica. Doe also quotes from Paradise Lost. These domestic observations are contrasted to his writings on sin. Doe is revolted by the self-glorification of a sinful world. He believes that the human race in the divine scheme of things is a pathetic shadow of what we could have been, if we had not Fallen (obviously referring to the original sin of temptation that Adam and Eve gave into).

In a film that deals heavily with religious themes, the movie is rife with Christian imagery, specifically crosses which are prominently displayed in many parts of the movie. John Doe also makes several biblical references himself notably to Sodom and Gomorrah:

• The power lines where the film's climax occurs.
• The large illuminated cross above John Doe's bed in his apartment.
• The power lines in front of the GLUTTONY murder's apartment.
• With the exception of the desert scene at the end, it is always raining, as in the Third Circle of Hell.
• Near the discovery of LUST a heavy wind is blowing as in the Second Circle of Hell, where the overly lustful were constantly blown about by a heavy wind.
• The GLUTTONY victim was forced to lie face down in food while he ate continuously, as in the Third Circle of Hell where those guilty of Gluttony are forced to lie face down in mud, in continuous cold rain while eating their own excrement.
• SLOTH was lying in a wet bed, probably with urine or excrement, but in the Fifth Circle of Hell the Slothful are forced to lie constantly underneath the surface of the Styx while the Wrathful fight each other constantly on the surface.
• The PRIDE victim appears to be posed in a crucifixion gesture.

There are also several angelic statues prominently displayed.

The recent comic-book adaptations of the film by Zenescope Entertainment give some insight into Doe's childhood and upbringing.

In the third issue, Sloth, it is revealed that, as a child, Doe suffered from excruciating cluster headaches, which were treated with a botched attempt at electroshock therapy.

The fourth issue, Lust, shows that Doe's mother was a religious fanatic, obsessed with sin and eternal damnation. At one point during his school years, Doe began to develop carnal desires for a sexually active girl in his class, which his mother condemned. His mother became infuriated upon finding Doe masturbating in the bathroom and severely beat him. Doe would later witness his mother making love to his equally God-fearing uncle.

The fifth issue, Pride, shows Doe, now a teenager, becoming besotted by a pleasant young girl in his religious-education class. At this stage in his life, Doe has begun the habit of writing journals describing his every thought and action. He writes that his feelings toward this girl are pure and that she is nothing like the girl he lusted over years before. He offers to help the girl with her revision and invites her to his house. Upon entering his room, however, they encounter John's mother, now a violent alcoholic. She is reading John's journals and mockingly reads them out to the girl.

The girl runs away, with John's mother physically attacking him and telling him that no matter what he does, he will always be a sinner and will inevitably go to Hell.

The sixth issue, Envy,, reveals that aside from his hair and fingertips, John also went as far as removing his teeth and genitals in order to avoid identification through dental records and seminal samples. The issue also explains that John used to serve in the United States Marine Corps and that he was married and had a son who died as an infant.

The final issue, Wrath shows that John's mother committed suicide by burning herself to death, using John's childhood possessions to feed the flames.

In an interview with Cinefantastique magazine, Andrew Kevin Walker stated that the primary influence for the film's screenplay came from his 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 Se7en."

The urban streets filled with crowded, noisy denizens while an oppressive rain always seems to fall without respite was an integral part 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 also created through a unique chemical process called bleach bypass, whereby the silver in the film stock was re-bonded which in turn deepened the dark, shadowy images in the film and increased its overall tonal quality.

An early version of the script features a completely different ending in which Doe's visiting and killing Tracy does not occur. Instead there is a final confrontation between Doe and Mills and Somerset. Doe kills Mills, and in his rage, Somerset acts out the sin of wrath, taking brutal vengeance upon Doe. Somerset shoots Doe not to kill, but rather to inflict maximum pain, shooting Doe in each arm and each leg. As Doe writhes in agony, Somerset sets Doe ablaze and lets him burn alive.

In this version of the script, the film ends again suggesting that Somerset will not retire after all. Instead, the now-widowed Tracy moves away to have her baby and try to find the kind of life to which Somerset had envisioned himself retiring. He symbolically passes what had been his vision of his future on to her.

The special edition of the DVD makes clear that other endings were considered also. An unfilmed alternate ending features Somerset shooting John Doe in an act of self-sacrifice to save Mills. When Mills yells "What are you doing?" Somerset says, "I'm retiring."

On the DVD commentary, Fincher states that once the desired resolution to the Doe/Mills/Somerset confrontation was settled upon, the film was then to end immediately after Mills shot Doe— the final camera shots being the scene of the crime seen from the helicopter. Nevertheless, in the end the additional scene was added with Mills being driven off and Somerset indicating that he would not retire after all.

Walker received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Film editor Richard Francis-Bruce was nominated for an Academy Award for Film Editing, and Director of Photography Darius Khondji's extensive use of bleach bypass film processing has since been noted as a major influence on contemporary cinematographic technique, especially in the late 1990s.^[2] The film was given an MTV Movie Award as best movie.

For the DVD release, SE7EN was remastered and presented in the widescreen format preserving the 2.40:1 aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. Audio options include Dolby EX 5.1, DTS ES Discrete 6.1 and Stereo Surround Sound.

The SE7EN DVD features four newly recorded feature-length audio commentaries featuring the stars and other key contributors of the film who talk about their experiences making SE7EN.

This DVD is also compatible with A DVD-ROM drive. Disc One - The Movie features a printable screenplay with links to the film.

In 2006, comic book publisher Zenescope Entertainment began a seven-issue miniseries, each issue focusing on one of Doe's victims before they were killed; e.g. the first issue, Se7en: Gluttony, focuses on the "fat man".^[3]

• In a parody clip for the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, William Shatner performs all three main roles in the desert scene, with both detectives and the killer being played as some of his most famous characters. He portrays Somerset in the persona of Capt. James T. Kirk, Mills as T.J. Hooker, and Doe as the host of Rescue 911. Kirk/Somerset and Hooker/Mills drive the Rescue 911 host to the desert to await the delivery van - the driver of which turns out to be an Orion slave girl whom Kirk/Somerset kisses after she delivers the box, which is then revealed to contain the head of Shatner singing Mr. Tambourine Man, much to the horror of Somerset/Kirk.

• Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish parodied the film in one of their many toy movies in The Adam & Joe Show. Theirs was a miniature version of the movie, made with cuddly toys, with the killings based around the Seven Dwarfs, and a Se7en-style title sequence to the tune of The Laughing Gnome by David Bowie.

• Robot Chicken also parodied the film with various Smurfs representating the sins and with Papa Smurf and Brainy filling the roles of Somerset and Mills respectively. Jokey Smurf filled the role of John Doe.

• Stephen Colbert parodied the film's final scene in his show The Colbert Report during his mantle scene with a cardboard box containing an unidentified object and a member of his crew parodying Brad Pitt's character.

• Radiohead parodied the desert scene in their webcast on November 9th, 2007. Thom's head was in the box, singing "15 Step."

• In 2007, an ad for Lynx Vice body spray was shown on British TV, featuring a library-frequenting detective similar to Freeman. He is investigating a series of murders apparently committed by women driven crazy by the Lynx effect. [4]

The opening credit music is a spliced sample of an uncredited remix of the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer" by Coil, available as "Closer (Precursor)" on the "Closer" single. The song during the end credits is David Bowie's song "The Hearts Filthy Lesson". 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
5. "Suite No. 3 in D Major", BWV 1068 "Air" - written by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Stuttgarter Kammerorche[ster] / Karl Münchinger
6. "Love Plus One" - Haircut 100
7. "I Cover the Waterfront" - Billie Holiday
8. "Now's the Time" - Charlie Parker
9. "Straight, No Chaser" - Thelonious Monk
10. "Portrait of John Doe" - Howard Shore
11. "Suite from Seven" - Howard Shore

• 90s favourites The Lemonheads' album Car Button Cloth featured a song called 6ix. The chorus repeatedly went "Here comes Gweneth's head in a box".
• In the song "Both Guns Blazing" by the hardcore band Bane, a direct quote from the movie is played at a break in the middle of the song.
• In the song "Swine" by the hardcore band Elysia, a direct quote from the movie is played at the end of the song.
• The song "Phucking phreak" by Industrial band Velvet Acid Christ uses samples from Seven.
• The song "Stormshield" by Grindcore band Nasum uses a sample from Se7en.
• The song "Old World Disorder" by Skam and Eminem has a piece of dialogue from the movie. Eminem mentions the song on "Stan"
• The movie was seen briefly in theaters in the film The Butterfly Effect (2004).
• German rapper Bushido used a quote on his album 7.
• The episode "The Magnificent Seven" for the series Supernatural. Dean Winchester referenced the ending scene ( "what's in the box" )

The band Dillinger Escape Plan uses a speech from John Doe in their song "Sugar Coated Sour."

• List of movies: numbers

v • d • e Films directed by David Fincher
Alien³ (1992) • Se7en (1995) • The Game (1997) • Fight Club (1999) • Panic Room (2002) • Zodiac (2007) • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)