Movie Reviews
For writer Leigh Wanell and director James Wan I can only imagine what goes through their mind at any given moment. Perhaps I don�t want to know. From the get-go, �Saw� is a disgusting practice in thoughtful sadism and cruelty. That, plus horrible acting and mindless directing. I can understand that directing is part aptitude, part ability, but there are sequences of this film that made me chuckle when I should have been covering my eyes or yearning for sentimentality.
Take the very beginning scene for example. We open to the startled face of Adam (the writer of the movie), whose body is submerged in a tub of water. His eyes flash open and he shoots his body out of the water to find himself in a dark room. Now, the room is supposed to be pitch black, but we can see perfectly fine. Nevertheless, Adam gropes around and screams �where am I!�. Understandable, yes, but he should be able to see just as well as we do. He finds himself chained to a pipe in a dingy bathroom.
As that scene unfolds, we find that Adam is not alone. Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) is also chained to a pipe, but on the other side of the room. They make each other�s acquaintance, and then proceed to discuss just how they ended up here. Neither remembers a thing. Slowly, they begin to find clues around the bathroom which describes what they�re doing there. A raspy voice on a tape recorder tells them the situation: both are here for various reasons, but the point is that it�s a game. To escape him and his wife and daughter�s execution, Lawrence must use a single bullet to kill Adam and he must do it before six o�clock. That gives him roughly eight hours to muster up the guts to do it.
�Saw� cuts back and forth between different time frames and different plot points. It tells about a wacko serial killer who kills his victims by putting them in horrific and highly improbable scenarios. The catch is that since these situations are so hard to find a way out of, the victims usually don�t survive because of an error of their own. Technically, the killer never actually kills them.
What makes me so angry about �Saw� is that it could have been remarkably good. It could have been so much better than it is. James Wan passes up every opportunity to create a piece of cinema that was nothing less than haunting, not to mention original. While it is much original than haunting, �Saw� never reaches a state where it can be taken seriously. One major reason for this is the way it was shot. Some of the lighting and cinematography is, in fact, very effective, but it becomes far too pretentious.
Another downfall of it all is the atrocious acting. Wanell and Elwes are laughably bad in nearly every scene they appear in, while Danny Glover has no chance to compensate for it because he has little dialogue. I guess that could be a blessing in disguise though.
This all brings me to the ending, which I dare not give away. I enjoyed the first twist, but it becomes so far fetched and ridiculous that it can no longer be considered entertaining. Hmm, sounds like the entire movie. ** �