See "Saw" and ride a teeter-totter of terror!

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2007)

Hardcore horror film fanatics measure their fright flicks by how far filmmakers push the envelope in their efforts to scare audiences. Meaning, what do the filmmakers do that that none have ever dared do in a horror picture? Do they pile on more blood and guts? Do they take horrific conventions (i.e. monsters or ways to die) to greater extremes of sadism? Do they offer more stomach-churning plot twists? Freshman director James Wan doesn't push the envelope with his movie "Saw," he shoves the envelope straight up our collective sinuses. Imagine the murderous 1997 movie "Cube" crossed with elements of the grisly, white- knuckled, Brad Pitt serial killer saga "Se7en" and nasty bits and pieces from Italian gore- master Dario Argento's nail-biters "Deep Red" (1975) and "Suspiria" (1977), and you have a glimmer of an idea what you'll get from "Saw." Basically, Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannel put the teeth back into terror with their ingenious, ironic, R-rated, masochistic thriller killer movie. This stark, visceral, mean-spirited, George Romeo-style gorefest isn't for folks who cannot handle Grand Guignol horror movies. Whether it's the eerie puppet head that intimidates the killer's victims or a psychotic character who decides he would rather cut off his own leg with a hacksaw to free himself from being shackled to a pipe, "Saw" succeeds in keeping you on the edge of your seat throughout its 100 nerve-wrenching minutes.
"Saw" opens as its two shanghaied protagonists, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes of "Robin Hood: Men In Tights") and a low-life photographer Adam (newcomer Leigh Whannel), awaken to find themselves chained at the ankles to huge pipes in the most foul-smelling and disgusting men's restroom this side of Iraq. Topping off everything, sprawled in the middle of the grimy floor between them, face down on the tiles in a huge puddle of dried blood, lies a dead man gripping a micro cassette recorder in one fist and a revolver in the other hand who appears to have shot himself in the head. Essentially, manacled as they are at the ankles across the room from each other, Gordon and Adam constitute a hybrid version of the 1958 Tony Curtis/Sidney Poitier civil rights yarn "The Defiant Ones." Since they aren't going anywhere, they try to deduce how they wound up in the worst place in the world. They discover that each has a micro cassette in their possession. After they manage to get the micro cassette player out of the corpse's hand and play their tapes, they learn that Dr. Gordon has until 6 PM to kill Adam (several hours from then) or they both die without a hope of anybody finding them.
Wan and Whannel keep things short, shocking, and savage. "Saw" is the kind of movie where the characters don't get second chances to live. Further, you'll have to be psychic to figure out who the killer is. Watch out for those red herrings! Nobody is really who they seem to be in "Saw." Ironically, the maniacal villain--referred to as 'the Jigsaw killer'--puts his victims in situations where they end up killing themselves or others in the process of trying to save themselves. Fans of the Ted Danson TV-sit com "Becker" will appreciate Shawnee Smith's acting range. In a brief role, she played a "Double Jeopardy" like heroine who escapes death, but bring eternal turmoil on herself. The Jigsaw killer placed her male roommate and her in a room. She has a huge steel bear-trap slung around her head like a helmet with a key lock. The killer reveals that when the timer spots, the bear-trap will implode and crush her skull, unless she can get the key inside the entrails of her dead roomie. Although she survives the ordeal, she learns afterward that her roommate was drugged, not dead, and she killed him when she eviscerated him in her search for the key. A subplot about a revenge-seeking, ex-cop (Danny Glover of "Lethal Weapon") who wants to kill the Jigsaw killer for killing his Asian partner alternates with the flashbacks about how our protagonists got to where they are, and the suspense mounts as to whether the ex-cop will rescue the victims before they have to kill each other. "Saw" is the kind of horror movie that appeals to your baser instincts by showing you things you won't easily forget when you go to sleep. See "Saw" and ride a teeter-totter of terror!