The 21st century's first great horror film!

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2008)

SAW is a film that can be considered a fusion of many elements of the horror genre. It has the deranged 'killer' who methodically downs his victims (like PSYCHO and all the subsequent slasher films that tried to emulate it). In that sense, he is just a mindless killer like Jason Voorhies, Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers. In reality, he is an intelligent serial killing sociopath with deep-rooted hatred of people who take life for granted: those are his victims, so that he is much more like the killer in SEVEN and other films about serial killers who are always one step ahead of the cops and FBI (in this case, he's about 5 steps ahead at all times!). Also, it is a very stylish film with a real grade-A Hollywood look and feel, but still captures the atmosphere of a horror film.
SAW is told in a random fashion with a lot of flashback scenes that drive the film. Although the PULP FICTION scenes technically weren't flashbacks, the style of SAW reminded me a great deal of that film, like each scene was its own separate vignette. You actually learned a lot about the different characters in these scenes. Case in point: the brilliant early sequence where the cops find one of the killer's victims in a dark cellar and as they discuss and re-create the crime, we see in flashback how the killer (unseen to the viewer) terrorizes the victim and shows us how he met his fate. Just one of the many great scenes of the film.
Cut to the first scene of our 'heroes': Dr. Lawrence Gordon (played with cool precision by Cary Elwes) and Adam (impressive performance by newcomer Leigh Wannell, who also developed the story and wrote the screenplay), who find themselves trapped in some grungy, dirty old warehouse bathroom chained to the fixtures. They find they cannot free themselves by any means. There is a man in the middle of the floor, a previous victim of our killer, who apparently shot himself when he realized that a slow-acting poison was coursing through his veins.
Gordon knows who is behind this: a killer who calls himself Jigsaw. In flashback, Gordon tells Adam how Jigsaw kidnaps, imprisons, and traps his victims and then forces them to make life-or-death decisions to release themselves from their traps. Sometimes they have to actually torture themselves or others to release themselves from the traps.
In flashback, we find out that the cops suspected Gordon at first because they found something that belonged to Gordon at one of the crime scenes. The lead cop is Det. David Tapp (played solidly by veteran actor Danny Glover), who is essentially the other main character of the film. Tapp and his partner Det. Sing take Gordon to the station and question him and find out he is not the killer because of a solid alibi, then they have him look in on an interrogation of one of Jigsaw's victims who survived. The girl's name is Amanda (played brilliantly by Shawnee Smith, who has too little screen time) and her sequence is the best in the film and truly shows the depths of torture that Jigsaw puts his victims through. Michael Emerson is also exceptional as Zep, a rather odd orderly at Dr. Gordon's hospital.
We also find out in flashback how Adam got there and of the connection between these 2 trapped men. We also get to learn about Gordon's family and personal life and why Jigsaw is punishing these 2 men. But most importantly, we learn about all of Jigsaw's earlier victims and the elaborate traps that he has put them in and what they must do in order to survive.
The film speaks a lot as to what depths a human will go to in order to save his life when he is pushed to the breaking point. Jigsaw has obviously planned his traps very carefully. The film has a major surprise ending, one of the biggest surprises that I have seen in a film ever. I was totally shocked by it.
SAW is a highly original, high-concept film. It could have failed miserably, but succeeds in spades! It has a wealth of interesting characters, a highly stylized look, a labyrinthine enjoyable plot, a pulse-pounding score, and an original serial killer for the new generation. A must see!