Se7en (R)
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This came out in 1995, and I always wanted to see it because it did pretty well both critically and financially. But I didn't get around to watching it until 2022. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, because I did like it, I thought it was a good movie. But I didn't like it as much as I would have hoped. I couldn't point to anything I disliked about it, I just didn't care that much about it. I mean, I cared at least a little, but it's not my cup of tea. And I feel bad about that, because I definitely recognize the quality. I also wanted to mention that while watching the title sequence, I thought "This reminds me of the title sequence from American Horror Story." So after watching the movie, I looked at Wikipedia to see if it happened to say AHS's sequence was inspired by this movie's, or anything. Turns out they were both made by the same guy, Kyle Cooper. So that's neat.

Anyway, I don't know when or what city the movie's set in, but it seems rather dystopian, from the protagonists' perspective. And it's pretty much always raining. There's a police detective named William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) who's going to retire in seven days, but that's not the seven of the title. A younger detective named David Mills (Brad Pitt) moves to the city with his wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). Somerset and Mills don't see eye to eye about much of anything, but they end up working together on a case, trying to catch a serial killer. The killer leaves the words "Greed" and "Gluttony" scrawled in blood at the scenes of two murders, and Somerset realizes it refers to the seven deadly sins, so there will be five more murders, unless they can stop the killer. There's not much I feel like saying about the investigation, but Somerset definitely seems more competent to me than Mills. (Not that Mills is incompetent, he's just not as good.) Also, Mills is sure the killer is insane, but Somerset isn't so sure about that. (I could talk about how most murders and such crimes are committed by sane people and most insane people aren't dangerous, but I don't want to put too fine a point on it. In any event, in the end I wasn't really sure whether the killer was crazy or not.) One thing I do want to mention is that at one point I said to myself something like, "It's not like this guy is Keyser Soze." But when they finally do get the killer (called John Doe), he's played by fucking Kevin Spacey. (Both this movie and The Usual Suspects came out the same year, incidentally.) But getting Doe in custody isn't the end of the story. There are still two murders left to discover, and they're both pretty disturbing. (I mean, all the murders were pretty damned disturbing, but the last two hit closer to home.) I don't want to spoil any details of the murders, though.

I really don't know what else to say, except that the movie definitely has a memorable climax. And the whole movie is very dark.