But, really, he just wants to help . . .

Rating: 2/10 (19 July 2005)

A friend of mine used to play a fiendish little parlor game, which went something like this: "Three men have machine guns trained on your parents. They will kill them unless you cut off your left foot with a chainsaw. Do this, and they will not only spare your lives, but also give you one million dollars. Would you do it?" This is the premise of Saw, another in a long line of movies about cunning psychos who have unlimited time and resources. In this entry, the fiendish "Jigsaw" places people in seemingly hopeless situations, just to see what they would do to live a little longerand to make them appreciate living a little more. For example, a would-be suicide, who had once tried slitting his wrists, is forced to crawl naked through a lethal maze of razor wire. A young female drug addict is forced to cut into a man's stomach to pull out the key to a nasty bear-trap-like device strapped to her head, according to directions given her on video by a talking clown dummy on a tricycle.
Yes, Jigsaw is quite the tinkerer. He's Rube Goldberg channeling the Marquis de Sade after watching a fistful of Dario Argento and David Fincher movies. Yet he really just wants to help people. He's the Dr. Phil of psychos.
But the focus of the movie is two mena sleazy photographer and a doctorchained to pipes at opposite ends of what appears to be Hell's men's room. A corpse lies between them in a pool of blood, a gun in one hand and a cassette tape player in the other. Seems that Jigsaw will kill the doc's estranged wife and daughter, unless the doc kills the photographer. You're in for over a 100 minutes of head games, screaming, whimpering, whiplash editing, and enough nihilistic techno music to make Ozzy Osborne's head explode.
Yes, it's every bit as entertaining as it sounds. Your interpretation of the previous sentence will reveal just what kind of a movie fan you are.
I won't reveal much more, but note that these poor guys each have a hacksaw, not for cutting through their chains, but through their ankles. That's it, reallythe whole movie is about waiting to see some guy saw through his ankle. Oh, and there is the identity of Jigsaw, but when the revelation comes, you won't feel that you've been misdirected by a master storyteller as much as you've been rooked by a carnie.
Do yourself a favor. If you really want to see a flick about a psycho who outsmarts everyone in sight, rent The Abominable Dr. Phibes and let Vincent Price show you how it's done.