Seven MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +3 1/2 Content: -3 1/2

William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a big-city homicide cop intent on retiring in seven days. Having seen enough terrible city crimes, he is glad to leave his troubles to David Mills (Brad Pitt), an eager young detective. The day Somerset and Mills meet, however, becomes the same day for the beginning of a well-planned series of murders centering around the seven deadly sins. The murderer has picked individuals that personify each of the deadly sins (Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Wrath) and uses each sin to kill them with. For example, an extremely obese man dies after he is force fed so much spaghetti that his stomach literally bursts. The murders become more and more gruesome as Somerset and Mills try to track down the killer before he can find his next victim. This is an extremely shocking film, but the storyline and moral message will keep viewers riveted.

Using such sources as Dante's Divine Comedy and the Bible, the serial killer believes that society is no longer sensitive to sin and that people are constantly performing what earlier Christian writers called the seven deadly sins. The killer feels compelled to wake up society through murder and mutilation of those sinners. Once again, Hollywood has degraded and ridiculed a Christian message by mixing it with violence, gore and filth. Five people are tortured and then killed, but we see only the sickening aftermath. A woman's nose is cut off, a man is strapped to a bed and skinned alive, another one bleeds to death after having a pound of flesh cut from him, and so on. Accompanying the gore, is atrocious language with almost 90 f- and s-words and many profanities. SEVEN commits the unpardonable sin of equating the amoral ideas of a religious fanatic with the Christian truth about morality. What is twisted cannot be straightened and, in this case, should not even be watched.

Preview Reviewer: Greg Wilson
Distributor: New Line Cinema, 888 7th Ave., 20th Floor, NY, NY 10106