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InstigatorxxlWe are all cono, connou, conni (looks up collins on-line dictionary in new window) connoisseurs!Yes that word!In different areas of life.Some of us love books and can quote them ad infinitum,others among us can rattle of bhps of cars all day,some love shoes and know the latest lines out,others love movies and know what is coming out when and starring who and are on first name basis with the dude who works in the projection room at their local cineplex.I can give examples till Ragnarok comes but what I am saying is that there is something that we are all passionate about and love to bits.We strive to know as much as we can about it and get hold of it.
I have many as we all do but one of my favourites and I have touched on this before and one of my top pics is villainy and moral depravity.Yesterday Seven came on T.V, I am sure that you have all seen it but if you haven't it is about two police detectives, the seasoned Detective Mills (Morgan Freeman) and the new kid on the block Detective Mills (Brad Pitt).They have to find a shadowy serial killer who is killing his victims according to the seven deadly sins.The serial killer,John Doe (Kevin Spacey) is played so well that it is orgasm inducing!
John Doe is not your run of the mill serial killer who does what he does because of what his mother did to him as a child, molestation by daddy or bullying as a kid.No we don't get to know who he was because he became God's angel of death smitting the first borns of the respective sins to teach the people then like the legendary phoenix immolating himself via Detective Mills rage!Let me whip off the drool dripping down my jacket.
What I also love about that movie is its' dark and melancholic mood.Most of the time it's raining,gloomy,the buildings are grimy and populated by roaches and crackheads.The one time that there is sunlight at the end of the movie which traditionally signifies a happy ending is anything but that.Anyway enough of me talking about the setting back to the hero, John doe.This man is a quiet, intense figure who is Machiavellian with his calculated words and actions.He is slow and methodical, let's take a look at the killings.
In the first crime scene an obese man who was force-fed, bound and tortured, lies dead. He has wires on ankles and wrists, and there is a bucket of vomit under the table. The pathologist later verifies that the man was fed repeatedly, then kicked in the side so he burst. This caused his stomach to split and led to an internal hemorrhage that brought on his demise. The first bit of evidence that has the two detectives believe they are after a killer with a grudge is Somerset's discovery of two shopping receipts, indicating that the killer had left the cockroach-infested, filthy apartment to visit a supermarket in between force-feeding the victim, who had eaten all the food in the house.I mean that is so so so delicous!John Doe actually force fed this guy despite his struggles and vomitting; then when food ran out of the house went to buy more and cook it.After establishing that the fattie was full to capacity he must have backed of 10 paces,sprinted towards the blob and swung his leg so far back that the sole of his shoe was touching his neck and let him have it!Wham!!!!Then repeated it like 10 times after which he went on to inscrib greed behind the fridge.That gives me an idea of what would happen if I had a grudge with Nick, anyway let's move onto the next masterpiece.
Doon after, the gruesome murder of the prominent Jewish lawyer Eli Gould, who was made to excise a pound of his own flesh in the tradition of William Shakespeare's Jewish character Shylock, is discovered, and written on the floor in Gould's blood is the word GREED.It is a touted belief that Jews are greedy summabitches and would sell their own mother.But anyway can you picture this uptown lawyer being stripped of his $3,000 suit sitting in his power seat with a gun being pointed to his head with John Doe slowly sharpening the knife and cooly looking at him, "A pound of flesh, no more no less, no gristle and no bone; that is the cost of your lies....."Most probably Gould offered John Doe money which was of course scoffed at, so the man paid his debt to society as is said.If only I could do this to those crooked lawyers protected by the Law Society of Kenya.
At the scene of Gould's killing they find a set of fingerprints. The evidence, cleverly hidden behind a painting which Mrs. Gould notices has been turned upside down, belong to a known child molestor and drug dealer.They storm the man's residence when the man is found tied to his bed, alive but suffering from severe muscular deterioration after having spent a year completely immobile, Somerset once again voices concern that they stand little chance of catching the cold-blooded, calculating killer, who photographed the process of the tied man's deterioration and manipulated the evidence the detectives collected to ensure that they discovered his victim exactly one year after he rendered him immobile. Besides the fact that the victim's brain is completely 'mush', the perpetrator severed his hand, which explains how his prints turned up at the scene of Eli Gould's murder. The word SLOTH is written on the wall.That is the definition of patience, to tie someone down,starve them but be diligent enough to take photos for a whole year and to pay rent, something that should be done to all convicted child molestors (minus the free accomodation) let's tie them down torture them slowly and painfully then publish the photos in the dailies as a detterent.It would give the terms scared straight a whole new meaning.Let's face it some prisoners can't be rehabilitated and should just be terminated (after their organs are harvested for transplant!)
Then comes the next sin.At this point the detectives had broken into John Doe's house and had a picture of a potential victim, a prostitute;there is also a receipt from a custom fetish shop for an item that winds up being used in the murder of said prostitute; LUST is written on the door outside a murder scene where a frantic man with a serrated weapon covering his penis was forced to copulate with a bound working girl.I mean talk about being straight and to the point here there was no finesse.He busted a married man who had gone to get a quickie made him wear a blade reinforced sock and as is said in swahili "Twende kazi!"I think at this point in the movie the way men feel that empathic pain in the nuts is when women felt the corresponding sensation in their womanhood.Or ladies am I wrong?
A fifth victim turns up the next day after a phone call from John Doe to his own apartment. A model is found dead in her own bedroom. Doe cut off her nose--"to spite her face"--then offered her a choice of living with her disfigurement or suicide, by gluing a box of pills to one hand (from which she could overdose) and a phone to call for help to the other. By choosing suicide, she accedes to the sin of PRIDE, which is written in blood on the headboard of the bed.I mean this is so sweet because there are some people who just live for their looks nothing else!Their looks define who they are, since we have so many ladies in KBW what would your choice have been? When Mills and Somerset return to police headquarters, John Doe (Kevin Spacey) confronts them. His shirt is covered in blood.
Doe offers to plead guilty but only if allowed to escort the detectives to his final revelation. On the way there, he extensively alludes to the greatness of his achievement, and seems particularly preoccupied with Detective Mills. He offers reasons as to why he has committed the heinous murders, and, in one of the film's most startling moments, explains that in order to arouse a heightened consciousness in the desensitised, amoral people of today, one cannot expect to tap them on the shoulder and have them listen, but rather, hit them with a style sledge hammer.Which I agree with 200%, people have been so desensitised nowadays look at what we have on television nowadays?I knew it was at a high level when I was munching popcorn during the whipping scene in the Passion of the Christ (or maybe I was just a cold hearted bastard anyhow) or the amount of sexuality in advertising.So harsh times do call for harsh measures.
When they arrive at Doe's prearranged location, dry and desert-like, a delivery truck pulls up. Inside is a delivery for Mills, which Somerset opens. He tells Mills, who is struggling to ignore Jonathan Doe's comments, not to come near the box. Doe's incessant rambling reveals that he had visited Tracy after Mills left for work and tried to play husband. The independently wealthy Doe envied the fruits of a common man's life and is thus guilty of ENVY. Doe then discloses that he killed Tracy and her unborn baby, and it becomes apparent that Mills was unaware of her pregnancy and that the object in the box is Tracy's severed head. Enraged, Mills pulls out his gun and dramatically contemplates killing Doe. Somerset tries to stop him, arguing that Doe's revelations only stand if he is killed for his sin of Envy and if Mills is the one who kills him and so becomes the embodiment of WRATH. "If you kill him, he wins," says Somerset. The distraught and emotional Mills, very much in line with the character Pitt has contrived, is overcome by the tragedy of the death of his wife and their unborn baby, whom he did not know existed until Doe told him. He shoots the killer in the head. Jonathan Doe drops dead, victorious.
I mean this man was a maestro!Hats off!He planned it all till his death at exactly 7.07!He took his time to study Mills and what made him tick and his life, I mean Somerset had nothing in his life to lose so he would have made a poor target.It reminds me of the time in Training Day when Denzel's character tells the training officer that he can see the love that he carries on his face and that he should never take it to work because the monsters (criminals) can smell it and they will take it from him, love is a beautiful thing but those who do not have and can't have it seek to destroy it wherever they find it.John Doe gave up his life to teach a lesson, how many of us would do that for a good cause?Anyway that movie is a masterpiece and John Doe beats Hannibal Lecter hands down as a figure to aspire to become.Here are some quotes from the movie.I recommend that you see it!
Memorable Quotes from
Se7en (1995)David Mills: Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent people.
John Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!
David Mills: Murderers?
John Doe: A woman...
David Mills: Murderers, John, like yourself?
John Doe: [interrupts] A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever.
John Doe:Don't ask me to pity those people. I don't mourn them any more than I do the thousands that died at Sodom and Gomorrah.
William Somerset: Is that to say, John, that what you were doing was God's good work?
John Doe: The Lord works in mysterious ways.
John Doe:Become vengeance, David. Become wrath.
John Doe:What sick ridiculous puppets we are / and what gross little stage we dance on / What fun we have dancing and fucking / Not a care in the world / Not knowing that we are nothing / We are not what was intended.
John Doe: Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention.
Comming soon:Serial Killing for Idiots!
Disclaimer: The contents of this post do not reflect those of The Acolyte,the management of this blog and blogspot.com and will not be held liable for legal expenses and loss of life that may be incurred as a result of trying to re-enact the incidents that have been recounted in this post.
