Saw it through, you won't like it one bit.

Rating: 4/10 (12 February 2006)

The idea is definitely good; in fact, that's what made me buy the DVD cheap at a sale. Psycho killer makes people play a 'game' with their lives. If they succeed---often at great pain, loss of blood, the occasional limb, or the killing of someone else---they will be set free again, and appreciate life more. If they fail, well... Let's just say they didn't appreciate life enough, then.
I'm not going to tell the story, hundreds of others already did so. I'm going to focus on what I felt as I was watching the movie. And that was basically nothing. It begins give minutes into the movie, when the doctor-character stresses in a totally unconvincing way that they have to cooperate to make it out alive. There isn't a single shred of mortal fear, of failure to reason properly, of distrust, or of whatever which makes humans human. *That* is the real scare you should get from such movies: to witness what happens when layers of sanity are silently but remorselessly stripped away. Instead, there's just grime, blood, sweat and dirty toilets. You know that the two main characters cannot kill each other because they are too far away from each other, and the only option they have to *make* the kill is by cutting off their own feet. Which is about the last thing they want to do---you really have to be desperate.
So what is the last straw? Not being able to answer a phone after you hear a lot of shots fired, and fear for the life of your wife and child whom you did not really show any affection for throughout the movie, I kid you not. I am sure that this is some ultimate joke aimed at people who are addicted to that wireless leash: they'd rather cut their own foot off in order to answer it then to let it ring and let voice mail handle it. The scenes portraying this ultimate breakdown are pathetic and totally unconvincing, simply because you---as a viewer---already know what happens, so you cannot sympathise with the victim.
The other 99% of the movie is just as bad. Flashbacks aplenty, sometimes even a flashback within a flashback, but this plot device doesn't really fit into this movie. They are just there to paint a picture of Jigsaw, but it doesn't really provide any clues as to solve the puzzle. Or rather, you learn that there is no other way to solve the puzzle save through what Jigsaw planned. In a really tense movie, the good guy manages to beat the bad guy by outsmarting him at his own game. A snowball has a better chance in hell of not melting than that happening in Saw.
I only give this movie a 4 because the only time I sat up straight and could appreciate the entire affair was the last one, one-and-a-half minute before the end. Then a totally unexpected alternate plot line develops you did not see coming, and it shows the only good idea the writer/director/producer had. I turned off the TV shaking my head and wondering why they didn't make the entire movie like that.
The psycho was such a nice idea to begin with. And it is really such a shame that it was ruined so expertly.