When a mysterious killer begins perpetrating a string of gruesome, fiendishly inventive murders based on the seven deadly sins, world-weary cop William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) gets assigned to the case while also being saddled with a new partner, hot-headed young detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). As he uses his veteran savvy and book smarts to try and anticipate “John Doe’s” next move, Somerset comes to fear that he and his mismatched partner are not solving the crime so much as serving as an audience for the biblically minded murderer’s bloody millenarian “masterpiece.” David Fincher’s intricate thriller is one of the most influential Hollywood films of the 1990s, not only for its serial-killer-as-genius conceit (which inspired countless knock-offs, including the Freeman-starring Alex Cross series), but also for its stunning visual aesthetic: rendering the film’s unnamed metropolis as a Stygian cesspool awash in grime, filth, and a constant rain that never cleanses, Fincher and cinematographer Darius Khondji create a vision of intense, unrelenting ugliness that is paradoxically breathtaking in its artistry. - Courtesy of TIFF