SE7EN (1995)
Label: WBDHE
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 126 minutes 56 seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround with Optional Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey, Kevin Spacey
David Fincher's Se7en (1995) celebrates it's 30th anniversary, and I cannot believe it has been that long, I remember watching at the cinema like it was yesterday, so impactful my viewing was. I remember walking out of the theater in the Fall of '95 thinking to myself that I'd just watched not just the best film I'd seen that year, but an instantaneous stone-cold classic. The gritty trend-setting noir-horror thriller follows the exploits of police detectives in an unnamed U.S. city, it looking like a cross between Batman's Gotham and Seattle with it's dreary, incessantly rainy and dreary atmosphere. We have the world-weary Detective Lieutenant William Somerset (Morgan Freeman, The Shawshank Redemption) who is just one week away from retirement, having been newly partnered with hot-head David Mills (Brad Pitt, 12 Monkeys), who has just transferred to the city with his wife Tracy (Gwenyth Paltrow, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow). Their first case together is that of an obese man who seemingly was forced at gunpoint to eat until he passed out, then kicked so hard that his stomach burst, killing him. It's a grotesque scene all around, set inside an dingy apartment lacquered in filth, with a days old bloated corpse of the obese shut-in, nearby are bucketfuls of vomit. Somerset instinctually knows that this is going to be an all-consuming case and wants off it, asking for a transfer and denied it by his grizzled captain (R. Lee Ermey, Full Metal Jacket), stating that this cannot be his last case, knowing full well that it's not likely to be solved easily before he retires. Their next case is that of a defense lawyer forced to carve out a pound of flesh from his own body, he's found dead in his office with the word "Greed" written in his own blood on the floor, causing Somerset to realize that someone is staging these murders to represent the seven deadly sins. The first murder was "Gluttony", the second "Greed", and the seasoned detective knows all to well that there are still five sins more to come, meaning five more crime scenes.
The elusive killer continues his elaborate murder set pieces, we get "Sloth" by way of a drug-peddling pedophile who has been restrained to a bed for a year wasting away to a living corpse; and for "Pride" a model has her nose cut off, given the choice between dialing 911 for help, and living disfigured, or O.D.-ing on pain pills. Somerset and Mills a connection on the federal level to use the library system to get a list of names of people who have checked out books relating the the seven deadly sins, and they get lucky, their first stop is the apartment of "John Doe" (Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects), and he's their guy. Mills chases him on foot after the suspect fires a hand canon at them in the apartment hallway, chasing him through apartments, out a window and into an alleyway, were the detective gets brained with a tire iron by the killer who gets the upper hand, holding a gun to the detective's head, he let's him live, with the cop unknowingly becoming part of the killers gloriously demented sermon on sin. With two sins two go, "Envy" and "Wrath:", the film climaxes with one of the most gut-punch endings of all time, overwrought and anguished, this is still one of my favorite final scenes in all of cinema.
The film has aged incredibly well, and while it inspired many imitators, none that have come after it have quite captured the dour, drizzly, and sickly atmosphere the way that David Fincher managed to with this slick but grotesque noir horror-thriller. The city itself looks like a relic from a noir film from the 1940s only set in the modern day, there's a sickly pallor that hangs over everything, even the detectives clothing recalls an earlier time. Watching The Batman more recently it'd be hard not to think that Matt Reeves was heavily inspired by Fincher's Se7en as well as the Zodiac - it's as influential now as it was in the mid to late 90s. When I think of Fincher, Pitt and Freeman and of their best work to date, it's always this film that I come back to. All the elements just lined up just right, both in front and behind the camera, from the sound design to the set design, in my mind this is an all-time classic, often imitated but never duplicated, it's a terrificly thrilling film that is gorgeously directed and brilliantly acted, a 10 out of 10 for me.
Audio/Video: Se7en (1995) makes it's long-awaited transition to 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, framed in 2.35:1 in 2160p UHD with HDR10 color-grade, no Dolby Vision. The 4K restoration was completed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s Motion Picture Imaging (MPI) and was sourced from the original camera negative, the restoration was overseen by director David Fincher. I threw on the previous Blu-ray just for the sake of comparison, and it's still a solid looking transfer, near reference level for Blu-ray for that era. With that said, this 4K Ultra HD bests it in all the expected area, details and textures are much improved with the 4K resolution, and the HDR10 color-grade handles the many dark scenes with a depth and nuance that the Blu-ray doesn't even come close to matching. The shadow detail is dialed-in perfectly, and those blacks are deep and inky like never before. The discolored skin of corpses, oxidized blood, and sickly colors of the sick-city are reinvigorated, and gloriously grimy in all the best ways.
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles. The previous Blu-ray release had a English DTS-HD MA 7.1 surround mix, this 4K Ultra HD has DTS-HD MA 5.1, and it's an impressive track all around. The sound design is terrific, lots of atmospherics like the sounds of the the near constant rainfall, a frightening low end that packs a wallop, and gunshots deliver startling bombast. The Nine Inch Nails remix of "Closer" over opening credits music Howard Shore phenomenal score, and David Bowie's "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" over the end credits also sound terrific, there's plenty of depth and range in this mix, with piercing high, deep lows, and a pleasing mid-range, with some fantastic use of the discreet channels to generate atmosphere and mood from start to finish. .
Unfortunately, there are no new extras for the films 30th anniversary, a sad shame to be sure, but thankfully they have carried over all the previously existing extras that were on the original DVD and Blu-ray releases. These include not one, but four commentaries; we get the Audio Commentary: The Stars: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman; Audio Commentary: The Story: Richard Dyer, Andrew Kevin Walker, Richard Francis-Bruce, Michael De Luca, David Fincher; Audio Commentary: The Picture: Darius Khondji, Arthur Max, Richard Francis-Bruce, Richard Dyer, David Fincher; and Audio Commentary: The Sound: Ren Klyce, Howard Shore, Richard Dyer, David Fincher. That's like a mini film school of knowledge right there.
We also get the 9-min of Deleted Scenes with Option Director's Audio Commentary; 13-min of Alternate Endings; the Still Photographs featurettes that include the 14-min John Doe’s Photographs with Commentary by Photographer Melodies McDaniel; the 2-min Victor’s Decomposition with Commentary by Director David Fincher; the 6-min Police Crime Scene Photographs with Commentary by Photographer Peter Sorel; the 11-min Production Photographs with Commentary by Peter Sorel; and the 8-min The Notebooks with Commentary by Art Director Clive Percy and Book Designer John Sabel. Next up is a 9-min Production Design featurette; then onto the 23-min Mastering for the Home Theater, which was a revelation to me in the DVD days, I wish they had updated it for the 4K UHD release though; and in-depth Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence which shows the Rough Version and the Final Edit with Optional Commentaries with Designer Kyle Cooper, and Brant Biles & Robert Margouleff. Disc extras are buttoned-up with a 7-min Theatrical EPK. Oddly we do not get the Trailer that appeared on the DVD and Blu-ray.
The standard release version is a four-panel Digipak that slips into a sideloading slipbox. I was a bit disappointed when I pulled out the Digipak from the slipox and it was not the replica of the John Doe Notebook like the Newline Platinum Series 2-Disc DVD release from back in the day, those Newline Platinum DVD release where the awesome. Instead it's a 4-panel digi-packaging featuring images from the film spread across the panels. The four panels are thin but have a heavier plastic core. There's no disc hub, just a sideloading disc pocket, which was a pain to extract the disc from, I had to clean fingerprints from the disc, which is why I dislike the pockets so much. The 4-panel digipak is closed up securely with the help of a magnet hidden away in one of the panels. The slipbox itself is fairly flimsy to be honest, has a nice soft-touch feel to it, and I do like the simplicity of the black minimalist design, more or less mirroring the Newline Platinum Series slipcase. The spine of my review copy was slightly creased during shipping and it's already showing signs of wear, which is why I dislike Digipaks, they are fragile and prone to shelf wear. I would have preferred a traditional slipcover with a black plastic keepcase to be honest. With that said, it's just packaging, the actual film looks and sounds terrific, that's what's important, but be warned, if you're picky about your packaging there's food for thought. I might ditch the digipack and slip the 4K disc into my Blu-ray keep case and tuck that inside the 4K releases slipbox, it fits rather nicely, just so I do not have to keep marking up the disc with fingerprints, and eventually that Digipak will tear just from normal wear.
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Special Features:
- Audio Commentary: The Stars: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman
- Audio Commentary: The Story: Richard Dyer, Andrew Kevin Walker, Richard Francis-Bruce, Michael De Luca, David Fincher
- Audio Commentary: The Picture: Darius Khondji, Arthur Max, Richard Francis-Bruce, Richard Dyer, David Fincher
- Audio Commentary: The Sound: Ren Klyce, Howard Shore, Richard Dyer, David Fincher
- Deleted Scenes with Option Commentary: Car Ride in from Gluttony (1:18); My Future (2:20); Raid on Victor’s (3:56); Spare Some Change? (0:23); Tracy Wakes from Light Sleep (0:58): Pride (1:14)
- Alternate Endings: Animated Storyboards of Un-Shot Ending (7:28); Original “Test” Ending (5:28)
- Still Photographs (featurettes): John Doe’s Photographs with Commentary by Photographer Melodies McDaniel (14:26); Victor’s Decomposition with Commentary by Director David Fincher (2:28); Police Crime Scene Photographs with Commentary by Photographer Peter Sorel (5:38); Production Photographs with Commentary by Peter Sorel (10:47); The Notebooks with Commentary by Art Director Clive Percy and Book Designer John Sabel (8:17)
- Production Design (featurette) (8;56)
- Mastering for the Home Theater (featurette) (23:18)
- Exploration of the Opening Title Sequence (2:51), Rough Version (2:51), Final Edit (2:51) with Optional Commentary One – The Concept – Designer Kyle Cooper, Commentary Two – The Sound – Brant Biles & Robert Margouleff
- Theatrical EPK (6:40)
Buy it!
Se7en (4K Ultra HD + Digital) Steelbook -https://amzn.to/40KNvOH
Se7en Standard 4K (Digipack)-
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