Se7en

The movie Se7en is the story of two detectives solving homicide cases all caused by one man who bases the murders upon the seven deadly sins. One of the detectives solving the case, Lieutenant Somerset, can be compared to Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night. Like Tibbs, Somerset is shown as being a very straight forward, goal oriented man. He places all of his focus and all of his time into his work and solving the case. Somerset takes his job of being the more experienced, and almost a mentor figure between him and his partner, Detective Mills, very seriously. He always seems to give the orders and offers points of advice to Mills. At first, Somerset seems skeptical about working with Mills, thinking he will mess up the case because of his inexperience. After seeing what kind of work Mills does, and getting to know him as a person Somerset looses his doubts. Obviously unlike Tibbs compared to his co-workers, Somerset holds more of an authority position over Mills, whereas Tibbs held absolutely no authority over anyone until he could prove to the Chief that he was an intelligent human being. One thing that both Tibbs and Somerset have in common is that they both do not seem to have a family or a big support system to go to. Tibbs has his mother to go to, but it doesn’t seen as if he has anyone else to go to. This may be one of the reasons why all of their energy and focus goes into their work.
Overall, I found this movie to be entertaining, yet a bit disturbing at some points.
The scene when they are driving in the middle of nowhere and John Doe is talking to Mills and Somerset from the backseat was very intense. Nonetheless, this movie showed a good example of how homicide murder cases are carried out.