Fairly effective, but more a collection of original ideas than an original movie as a whole...

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2005)

STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits
Two complete strangers, a doctor (Cary Elwes) and an apparent waster (Leigh Wannell) awaken to find themselves in a brightly lit room chained by the foot in close proximity to each other. They soon find they have been placed there by a sadistic psychopath who wants one to kill the other in a battle to come out alive. As they sit around waiting for their time to run out, the doctor starts recalling in flashback events that may have possibly led up to their present predicament, the waster does the same and before long they are piecing things together as their sanity gradually deteriorates that lead up to a shattering final revelation. Whilst recounting events, the doctor also leads onto a story of a detective (Danny Glover) who became obsessed with hunting the killer down and may still be playing a part in events as they speak...
There is one original angle of how the killer isn't technically really a killer after all and there are some interesting slants on how he selects his victims, but the movie as a whole actually borrows ideas from other, superior movies. Many have compared it to Se7en, but I actually think it has more in common with movies such as Cube (the concept of them waking up in an unfamiliar place with no idea how they got there!) and Phone Booth with the killers reasons for selecting those particular people.
It's a fairly slick effort, genuinely suspenseful and with a great central performance from Elwes, not to mention having a well developed plot. But it's downfall is that it has aspirations of being a really high concept film when really for the most part, it's ironic that the killers name is 'Jigsaw' since that's what it's really like in terms of piecing all the bits it's stole from better movies together. ***