Seven, 1995.
Directed by David Fincher.
Starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. McGinley, Kevin Spacey, and R. Lee Ermey.
SYNOPSIS:
David Fincher’s 1995 classic Seven makes its 4K Ultra HD debut with beautifully remastered image quality that has some, what I think are unobtrusive, CGI enhancements. Nothing new was created in the bonus features department, but just about everything from previous editions was ported over, so you will busy for a while going through all of it. Highly recommended.
I’ll admit I’ve been in a bleak mood in recent months, so revisiting David Fincher’s Seven (or, if you prefer, Se7en) felt right in step with how I’ve been feeling. I’ll make my way out of it, as I always do, but right now, I’m not much of a fan of humanity in general.
And so is William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), one-half of the police detective duo in this film. He’s world-weary and beaten down by the grimy, anonymous city where he lives (and where it’s perpetually raining), and now he has to deal with a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who seems to be following the seven deadly sins as he works his way through various citizens.
The other half of the duo is David Mills (Brad Pitt), a new transfer who has arrived in the city with his pregnant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), and is gung-ho about his job. Yes, the pair play to a trope we’ve seen before, where one cop is sick of this crap and ready to retire, and his new partner is a young guy ready to take on the world, but I can look past that to appreciate the taut suspense found here.
Okay, yes, R. Lee Ermey’s police captain plays to a stereotype too, but Seven is anything but predictable in the way its third act unfolds. Even though I’ve seen it a few times, I still felt that sense of awful dread as the “What’s in the box?” scene played out.
This movie has been on all the major (and one minor: Laserdisc) formats since its home video debut in 1996, and now Warner Bros. has issued it on 4K Ultra HD with a new transfer personally overseen by Fincher. Overall, the film looks great, with image quality that, as I’ve said for other 4K Ultra HD releases, is the pinnacle of its appearance on home video, but …
… Fincher did some CGI tweaking here and there in the movie. None of it is on the same level as George Lucas’s 90s era revisions to Star Wars, but if you’re a purist, you might want to hold onto previous versions of Seven on disc. Personally, none of it is a big deal to me, because we’re literally talking about things like adding clouds to one shot and an open door to another, but I thought I’d do my due diligence and point that out.
On the bonus features front, nothing new was created for this edition, and it seems that a few things were dropped from the earlier Blu-ray (I only have this one on DVD), but what’s here is pretty comprehensive. Yes, I’d love to see a retrospective on the film, even something around 30 minutes or so, but there’s still plenty of extra content to dig through.
The supplements kick off with four commentary tracks, each one featuring Fincher, but they’re categorized so you can dip into whichever ones sound interesting to you. All of them are engaging and thorough — I wonder how long it took to record them, since I imagine Fincher probably didn’t want to knock all of them out in one day. Or maybe he did.
The first track, The Stars, teams Fincher with Pitt and Freeman, while the second one, The Story, puts the director in the room with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, editor Richard Francis-Bruce, film studies professor Richard Dyer, and Michael de Luca, former president of production at New Line Cinema.
The third track, The Picture, brings back Fincher and Francis-Bruce to chat with director of photography Darius Khondji and production designer Arthur Max, and the final track, The Sound, teams Fincher with composer Howard Shore and sound designer Ren Klyce.
It’s not hard to see how those four tracks will give you a very comprehensive look at the making of the movie, without a full-blown documentary being made. However, I admit I’d rather watch a 90- or 120-minute documentary than watch the movie four times with different commentary tracks turned on. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Moving on, we have deleted scenes and an alternate ending, all of which is available with optional commentary by Fincher, a nine-minute featurette on the production design, an old-school EPK (as they used to call them) that runs just under seven minutes, a 23-minute featurette on the remastering work done way back when for home video release, an 8.5-minute exploration of the opening title sequence with optional commentary, and, finally, still galleries that play as a 41-minute video with commentary by on-set photographer Melodie McDaniel.
Yeah, that’s a lot, so if you love Seven but haven’t checked it out on home video yet, this is a perfect opportunity to do so.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
