Saw ---- ***1/2 (out of 5) (2004)
Cast: Leigh Whannell, Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Ken Leung, Dina Meyer
Director(s): James Wan
Screenwriter(s): Leigh Whannell
Released on: October 29, 2004
Reviewed on: March 13, 2005
Rated: R - for strong grisly violence and language
Two men, a young kid named Adam and an older doctor named Lawrence, wake up in a dark and filth-ridden bathroom that has obviously been neglected for years on end. They each have one of their ankles shackled up and a chain tied tightly around large pipes next to them, so escape will prove to be an arduous task. Lying in between them is a dead body in a pool of blood, the corpse of a man who apparently committed suicide recently. In each of their pockets, they find envelopes with cassettes in them that read "Play me." Lawrence also finds a bullet and a key in his pouch. They see that the dead man is holding a tape recorder, so they obtain it and play each of their tapes. Soon, it becomes clear that a mysterious madman has abducted them and placed them in one of his psychotic games. The goal here is for Lawrence to somehow kill Adam in eight hours' time, or his wife and daughter will die. In a toilet next to Adam, the men discover two hacksaws. The tools are too weak to cut through the chains, and their real purpose is something the men don't want to consider.
Lawrence immediately knows who has trapped them in this situation: an elusive murderer who police have dubbed the "Jigsaw Killer." Though the focal point of the film revolves around the entrapment of Adam and Lawrence, a chunk of flashbacks presented in a non-linear form continuously provide us with important details on Jigsaw, the lives of Adam and the doctor, and how they got to be where they are. From past cases, it's become evident that Jigsaw opts to indirectly kill his victims, rather than doing it himself, by placing them in horrific games where they have a strict time limit to follow to reach a goal, or they will meet some kind of grisly fate. Jigsaw's objectives are to teach people to be grateful for being alive, in whatever twisted means necessary.
As if to laugh in the face of the average horror flick, SAW proves itself worthy of being deemed entirely original, despite baseless comparisons to SE7EN. It's amazing that a film could prevail on such a significant level, while being discriminated against because of association with a genre that has produced so many abysmal pictures over the years. What SAW has going for it from the very start is a good plot. It saddens me that so many writers have never taken that simple four-letter word and used it to their advantage. I suppose that, most of the time, the word on their mind has five letters and begins with M and ends in Y.
SAW's most relatable aspect since its 2004 Halloween release is a tendency to show gory images to the fullest. I will, however, complement it for not over-indulging itself. Films like Halloween rely on unseen acts to provoke nightmarish thoughts, but SAW brings everything to the table with visceral gusto. But even though it's pretty ballsy, you can only show so much before the MPAA sticks you with the NC-17, which just about forbids any kind of action in the theatres and ensures a straight-to-video release that will go largely unrecognized. Making some cuts to the more graphic scenes, SAW's final cut is a hard-R with a disturbing grittiness to it that causes many creepy visuals to linger in the mind's eye. It also shines light on several terrifying scenarios and a variety of unthinkable cruelty that leaves an impact not always because of what it shows but because of what it suggests.
Disregard what you may or may not have heard about the large plotholes or the bad acting. Those kinds of elements do not make a difference in the realm of SAW, since the intensity of the storyline overshadows most of that. Backed by sadistic creativity, a haunting clown puppet, and an awesome surprise ending to rival the likes of Memento, SAW is a dizzying trip into a world where you're not forced to remove your brain before watching it. It's clever and requires that you pay extra attention to little details. This SAW is sharp.
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