"SHARP", But Not Quite Sharp Enough

Rating: 7/10 (4 March 2006)

Poor Wesley. For Cary Elwes, former beloved of THE PRINCESS BRIDE, this is about as far away from the beautiful, fairy-tale perfection of the fields of Florin as you can get. Now, he's Doctor Lawrence Gordon, barefoot and chained in the most hellishly nasty abandoned washroom you could possibly imagine, just like his fellow captive, Adam, (SAW'S author, Leigh Whannell.) They are both the latest victims of the dementedly brilliant serial killer, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell from THE X-FILES, amongst other things), who actually never kills any of his victims...he gets them to kill themselves, or each other, depending on what sick rules he's set for the twisted games he plays.
SAW did gangbusters at the box office, and has many admirers...amongst those who probably haven't seen a lot of movies of its kind. But what Whannell and director James Wan have actually done is steal from the best, which is what most great filmmakers do. The biggest problem with doing it, is that when you do "borrow" certain plot conventions, you have to do it in a way that one-ups the great sources you're stealing from. And since SAW cribs from SE7EN, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and the cult classic THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, it has already shot itself in the foot...so to speak, before it even gets started.
Plus, in spite of some great photography, truly disturbing images and some well done moments of outright creepiness, you can't quite shake the feeling that Whannell and Wan were feeling a little too pleased with their own cleverness as they made it. The "cherry" on top is one honey of a shocker ending, which unfortunately places it in BLAIR WITCH territory, as a film whose first 85 or so minutes just aren't as good as the last five.
I wasn't as P.O.'ed by the end as I was with HIGH TENSION. Not a bad first effort, but the script could've definitely benefited from some more tweaking. And it might've helped if it had been an entirely unknown cast, instead of having the perfunctory low-budget "guest appearances" (THE SHIELD'S Benito Martinez, STARSHIP TROOPERS' Dina Meyer, ALONG CAME A SPIDER'S Monica Potter, and most wasted of all, Danny Glover.) Good if you have never seen a serial killer/psycho-thriller before. But any one of the other films I mentioned will probably seem MUCH better than the first time, if you watch them right after seeing SAW.