This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris kick off Seven Week with Se7en, David Fincher's 1995 serial-killer thriller starring Morgan Freeman as the retiring Detective Somerset, Brad Pitt as the brash new partner Mills, Gwyneth Paltrow as Mills's wife Tracy, and Kevin Spacey as the killer John Doe.
The dads begin with Fincher's comeback after the Alien 3 experience, writer Andrew Kevin Walker's love letter to a New York that is never named, and Dan's warning that this is a film you need to watch in a dark room at night, which Reegs disputes after buying the ultra-high-definition version on Prime. They go through Somerset's meticulous routine and his seven days to retirement, then through the murders themselves: the gluttony victim forced to eat until he burst, the lawyer made to cut out a pound of his own flesh, the emaciated sloth victim tied to a bed for a year to the day, the lust victim and the blade, and the model who chooses sleeping pills over the phone.
Along the way they enjoy the dinner at the Mills house, the apartment that shakes every time a train goes by, the library watch list that leads them to John Doe, the foot chase that gave Brad Pitt his broken hand, and the Nine Inch Nails opening credits that every music video then spent years trying to copy.
Then comes the ending. The dads talk through Doe handing himself in, the deal with his lawyer, the drive into the desert, the delivery van arriving at 7:01 and what is in the box. They argue about why it still hits so hard, why Brad Pitt's reaction is one of the best moments of his career, and why Cris finds it such a conflicting feeling to cheer for a man who ends up fulfilling the killer's plan.
The verdict is a full-strength recommend: a bleak, grimy, brilliantly built thriller that Sidey rates ten out of ten, and fittingly, seven out of seven.
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