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In this world, Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) has spent his entire career, and finds himself just one week away from retirement. Somerset is taken straight from the cinematic book of stock character templates; he’s a cerebral and unusually cunning detective who is lionized by his peers for his success, even as they ostracize him for his unconventional tenacity. It’s a pretty common storytelling technique to make one character appear brilliant by rendering everyone around him stunningly incompetent, and Somerset is no exception. Although he possesses a pretentiously encyclopedic knowledge of classical literature, his observations are generally no more insightful than those of Michael Knight and his talking car. But his peers seem almost intentionally incurious, leaving Somerset wallowing in a black hole of cynicism over our troubled society and the apathy of those charged to protect it.

Somerset is then (in another police story standby) that he’s paired with a newcomer, Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). Naturally, Mills is an impulsive youth – nearly as clever as Somerset but less refined, and more apt to follow his emotions rather than his mind. An incurable optimist, Mills deliberately chose reassignment to this Precinct of the Damned out of an activist’s desire to change things for the better. Mills behaves as an obvious counterweight to Somerset’s intellectual sulking, but the gravity both actors bring to their roles quite nicely fills out what would otherwise be just another highly conventional pair of star crossed police detectives.

The partners are assigned to investigate a ghoulish murder, where an obese man was forced to gorge himself to death, and the killer has left behind references to the Biblical sin of Gluttony. In a move that the movie treats as a stroke of genius, Somerset makes the somewhat obvious observation that the killer is referencing Scripture and that there will be more attacks, as there are in fact Seven Deadly Sins. While it is true that police are often reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of a serial killer, when a suspect leaves you a note detailing his MO as well as his intent to kill again, it seems to me you’ve got to call it for what it is. But movie plots are often simplifications of reality for the purpose of storytelling efficacy, and isolating Somerset and Mills in a dramatic fishbowl with the murderer effectively ramps up the tension of the story.

There are indeed more killings – Gluttony is quickly followed by Greed and Sloth, each murder more gruesome and symbolic than the last. The killer leaves behind more obvious and provocative clues, mocking his pursuers with relish. Frustrated by their suspect’s elusiveness, Mills and Somerset pit their dueling philosophies against one another and threaten to become adversaries. But at several pivotal points, Mills’ wife becomes a unifying catalyst, and all three discover that there really isn’t much space between them at all.

Like the other two leads, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) first appears to be yet another derivative, cardboard cutout. She initially seems less an independent person than a sub-character of her husband, a family member there only to be put in obvious danger at the story’s climax a-la Lethal Weapon. But despite being the only female character in a cast of dedicated Alpha Males, Tracy also serves as the film’s unexpected moral and emotional center. What initially seems to be someone sopping over with doe-eyed innocence proves to be the most beautiful thing in the film, and its only truly empathic individual.

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