Se7en
Se7ven gave us a little bit more of a modern age look at the buddy cop genre. It was very easy to see how the issue of racism has evolved in the last thirty or so years since “In the Heat of the Night” was written. We were now able to see a black cop who had a very long career in law enforcement, yet we were not shown any issues of blatant racism toward him. This movie was also a very typical buddy cop movie as far as the requirements which we discussed in class: an awkward meeting, one not wanting to work with the other, bonding throughout the film and a moment at the end where Summerset tries to protect Mills from committing an enormous mistake. Their growth as cops and as friends throughout the movie paints a perfect picture as to what the buddy cop movie is trying to accomplish.
Throughout the movie I kept drawing comparisons between Summerset and Virgil from “In the Heat o the Night”, and this had nothing to do with race. I found it very interesting that they both had a job in front of them which they would be very good at but they did not want to take on the job, Summerset because he wants to retire and Virgil because of racist acts towards him, yet neither of them could walk away from the job. For both of them their “cop” duties and instincts overrode any sort of emotions that would prohibit them from doing their jobs.
I also found it very strange that we would see a “good guy” being arrested at the end. I think this is probably the first movie I have seen where a good cop ends up getting arrested. Usually in a situation like that we would have seen Summerset come up with a story of how the murderer had in some way tried to harm Mills, for example: the chief in Beverly Hills Cop protecting his men at the end, or something along those lines to get him off the hook rather than seeing him go down like that.
Throughout the movie I kept drawing comparisons between Summerset and Virgil from “In the Heat o the Night”, and this had nothing to do with race. I found it very interesting that they both had a job in front of them which they would be very good at but they did not want to take on the job, Summerset because he wants to retire and Virgil because of racist acts towards him, yet neither of them could walk away from the job. For both of them their “cop” duties and instincts overrode any sort of emotions that would prohibit them from doing their jobs.
I also found it very strange that we would see a “good guy” being arrested at the end. I think this is probably the first movie I have seen where a good cop ends up getting arrested. Usually in a situation like that we would have seen Summerset come up with a story of how the murderer had in some way tried to harm Mills, for example: the chief in Beverly Hills Cop protecting his men at the end, or something along those lines to get him off the hook rather than seeing him go down like that.
posted by Danny at 7:47 PM
3 Comments:
It is true that usually our cops are able to kill people at will with no punishment at all. However, in this film there seems to be a different set of rules in effect.
And that makes it quite interesting.
In reference to the whole racism aspect, I did notice that. I was thinking how different this film was from "In the Heat of the Night" - this time two cops of different races are forced to work together, yet it doesn't seem to bother either one of them that they are of differing races. I didn't notice any scenes where Summerset being black had any negative impact.
Interesting about the ending with the "good" cop going to jail - I didn't even think about how they usually can kill whomever and it really doesn't have any negative affect for them, but this time he ends up getting arrested. I wonder though if that's to kind of put an ending to the whole thing that the killer was trying to bring forward? Like...maybe he was right? We're all human and have our sins that we can't seem to control. Hmmmm....
Usually the cops kill whoever they feel should be killed and they are rewarded for their courage and treated as heroes. Here is it a different story. It makes you think back to all others killed in previous movies, should any of the previous cops have been punished for their actions just because of their "power" of being in law enforcement?
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