Tuesday, January 08, 2008

We see a deadly sin on every street corner, and we tolerate it

Even though I’ve seen Se7en at least a dozen times, there is always something new in the movie that I catch each time. I’ve never really paid much attention to the fact that it does indeed fall into the biracial cop pair up category though. One of my favorite things about the movie is the pairing up of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. Early in Brad’s career, it shows him as a somewhat talented actor next to Morgan Freeman who is one of the most talented African American actors in American culture.

Some of what we talked about today in class in the way of what we come to expect in movies can be seen in this 1995 dark film about how society lives a life full of greed, lust, wrath, pride, envy, sloth and gluttony, otherwise known as the seven deadly sins. As we discussed in class, there are several elements of any buddy cop film, which we have come to expect over the years. One of our expectations was a “trigger” scene that brings the two together. This scene is the first scene after the credits role where the two characters first meet and are supposed to be working together. This changes after their boss reassigns Brad Pitt’s character is reassigned to a murder of a prominent local attorney. The change is temporary since Morgan Freeman’s character is at least minimally informed of his classics of Dante’s Purgatory, and both characters find a sin written on the scene of the crime. Another expectation was that the cops would clash or not work well together, which takes place for the first 30-45 minutes of the film. Freeman’s character is patient although he doesn’t like Pitt’s character’s work habit or attitude, and vice versa. Pitt’s character thinks that Morgan’s character is too slow paced and reads too much into things, at first at least, until he catches on to the case. Their bonding moment was in the car on the way to bust a suspect and they are discussing taking bullets, pulling their guns and people they have worked with who have been gunned down. One aspect of movies we did not mention, but I remembered only after watching this again, was that annoying staircase that appears to go up what seems to be ten floors and all the SWAT team run up all ten flights of stairs as if it was nothing. This is mainly a cinematography aspect as you see the camera look either up or down the many flights of stairs that doesn’t appear in every cop movie, but it is a common camera angle.

The first time I saw this movie, I remember being rather grossed out by the corpses and the way they’re displayed, maybe cause I was 14 at a friend’s house. I got kind of used to it, in a jaded sort of way.

2 Comments:

Blogger Danielle A said...

I agree with how you feel about each characters performance and the way they both saw each other. You are right about how Somerset saw Mills in a different light unlike his own, moreso inexperienced. Mills saw Somerset as too mmuch by the book, but as we have discussed, most buddy cop films have the rebellious cop and the strict, rule following cop.

3:33 PM  
Blogger Vladigogo said...

Ah, the staircase shot. You are correct. It is always in this kind of flick. At least in Ghostbusters they make fun of that shot as they have to go to the top of a high rise building and have to climb all the stairs, which is drudgery for all four of them.

I wonder whether your jaded sense about the violence proves the movie's point perfectly.

5:18 PM  

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