Tries very very hard, but isn't the great thriller I thought it would be

Rating: 3/10 (20 February 2005)

Contains spoilers
I thought this movie was OK. Not bad, not a masterpiece, just OK.
What I liked: A strong wife character for once! So many films like Seven have whiny little wives that seem more plot points than 3-D, something for a main male character motivation. Saw blew that out of the water. The movie had a Cube like feel that I enjoyed "how did I get here" and the paranoid, etc. Saw borrowed a lot from Cube and I liked Cube much better. I thought the movie had great acting, especially over some of the writing the actors had to deal with, the "are you OK"s enough to make me start laughing...no, I am not OK, I am being kidnapped or no, I am not OK, i've been shot, plus the opening scene had some very bad dialogue that could have been totally cut out, but the actors did a lot with what was given to them. Plus, the weird statement by the black cop to the girl drug addict who had experienced extreme trauma, not to mention killed someone, "Do you feel grateful?" What? Who talks to a victim like that? Sorry, this is easily become the dislike section, sorry! I did like the use of the props in the film to create a puzzle, the key, the X, the photos, the recorder, etc. I liked the ideas used in the plot, though for me they tripped on their feet (heh) in the end. The cell phone scene where the doctor hears shots and his child scream etc was pretty horrifying as was the scene with the girl with the Brazil like device on her head. Was all that metalwork needed? For every good scene, though, there was an equally bad special effects driven scene with bad dialogue. Yes, it was maddening in both good and bad ways. I did like how the story of the doctor and where he was kept changing with added information.
What I disliked: Can we say Seven and Natural Born Killer moments until it hurts? I started to assume this movie was only intended for teenage boys, since it was videogamey here and there. The car chase scene at the end was truly laughable, but I am not sure if it was meant to be or not. The constant jiggling camera and spinning were just annoying and reminded me of a Nine Inch Nails video. It's been done too many times before and it was a strike against the decent plot of the movie instead of a boon. It looked like a complete Seven ripoff.
There was a lot of confusion for me viewing this. My suspension of disbelief doesn't run so high as to believe that a madman can literally lie still and play dead for 8 hours. If fact, I turned away for the movie for a second and thought the doctor who cut his foot off actually got up and tore his face off Scooby Doo style to reveal the bad guy. That is how much I couldn't believe the bad guy here just played dead for 8 hours with neither of the man in the room noticing. I didn't believe the black guy would have gone mad enough to follow this man, because I thought the ex-cop thought the doctor was the killer. He could definitely see he wasn't, so the plot threw me off there. Plus, there was a girl who survived, yet couldn't say anything about where she had been, yet the cops could figure it out in about five seconds? Then there is the whole doctor shooting Adam but Adam not dying. I could have sworn the doctor hit him full on in the chest and I am sure someone can make the point that the doctor was mad and therefore tried to kill Adam so his family could live, even if it was too late, but it fell flat on me.
Why would he shoot Adam then? It seemed the only way to explain was too say "they all went mad" because we didn't really get a motive other than the bad guy had a disease and wanted people to appreciate life by causing them trauma that made a few of them go insane. But when we see him in the hospital, he is in a coma, or at least I thought. So that leaves me confused. Plus, the "game" seemed so bloody complex, you really start to wonder how one person could do it all without being found out or something going wrong. Even with a good amount of fantasy and disbelief added.
Overall, if I watched this film 3-4 times, I would probably make sense of it or things would become clearer. But I don't want to waste my time on it. I guess a lot of people liked this film but I didn't think it was more intelligent or suspenseful than any other movie on the market. Maybe I have too high of standards for my suspense-mystery flicks. I want movies in that genre to be a roller coaster, this one tended to stop before the ride was over and I got out, entertained but wanting to experience the last part of the ride but couldn't get back on. This is more than people who like their suspense films like an interesting story without much commitment to the "whys". I rather like the whys myself but this really had none. It was like a suspense film without much suspense. I really wanted it to be more.