See-Saw?

Rating: 5/10 (12 November 2004)

There are some movies that are just better when you unexpectedly find them on the television on one of those late late Friday or Saturday nights when you can't sleep. Generally, these are movies that have a few scares and thrills and probably due to the fact that you are just happy you found something other than an infomercial, you are prone to giving it a higher recommendation than had you spent a few bucks at the theatre.
Movies such as From Dusk 'Till Dawn, Evil Dead II, Jacob's Ladder and Angel Heart are good examples of movies that might have been hard pressed to garnish more than a 2 ½ star rating had you not seen it with a tub of Hagan Das Ice Cream in your lap at an hour reserved for REM's.
Add to the fact that movies after a certain hour also tend to scare us more than daytime horrors. My niece recently viewed The Exorcist for the first time and I surprised afterwards that the 14-year old said she had laughed her way through the experience. I later found that she watched the film with a bunch of friends in the middle of the day. Not exactly setting the mood for this type of fare to be sure.
All of this came back to memory after my viewing of the new thriller Saw, out in theaters now. The movie starts with two men who wake up in an abandoned washroom with heavy chains around their ankles. In the middle of the room lies a body soaked in blood with a gun in one hand and a tape recorder in another. The two men - Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) - have been drugged and take some time to realize the severity of their situation. As they begin to shake out the cobwebs, their recollection of how they may have been abducted and who may be responsible lead to a grizzly conclusion.
Dr. Gordon is able to shed the most light on their circumstance. When a tape is found in each of their pockets and played on the recorder left in the dead man's hand, it is revealed that the psycho that has entrapped them wants Dr. Gordon to kill Adam with the one bullet he has left with the gun. If Dr. Gordon does not kill Adam before 6:00PM, his wife and daughter will be killed. Adam's chance of survival comes from the two hacksaws that have been left in strategically in a toilet tank. It becomes evident that whomever has put them in this situation wants them to consider cutting off their own foot in order to gain a chance at freedom. From here, Leigh Whannell's screenplay throws countless darts at the plot board in an effort to make the story plausible. In fact, for two people secluded in a warehouse washroom, there are plenty of items found that made me think of one of those video games where countless things are hidden in a room, you just have to move you cursor around to find it all. Within the few hours of their incarceration, the two find a picture of the doctor's wife and child, pictures taken by Adam the day of his capture, two cigarettes, a key, two hacksaws, a video cameraetc etc etc. And to think, I can't even find the converter most times if it falls between the sofa cushions. All of this occurs, of course, as the police try and hunt down the psycho behind the master plan. Danny Glover will be the one recognizable face as the officer who goes mad trying to bring the person known as 'Jigsaw' to justice.
I suppose this movie is going to have every reviewer mentioning Se7en among its review. Saw does have many similarities. Most specifically are the lurid ways in which people are killed. Ten years ago, Se7en pushed the envelope and its legacy can be seen in any of the CSI television programs today. Saw tries to match this ingenuity by issuing in a villain that never kills anyone directly. Instead, he carefully orchestrates (to great lengths) scenarios whereas one person must kill another or put themselves at great risk in order to survive. A female has a rusty contraption on her face that will destruct in minutes unless she can get the key out of the stomach of a helpless man lying drugged on the floor; a man must climb through razor barbed wire in order to gain freedom before sealed in an underground tomb. Who thinks up this stuff?
But for all its creativity, Saw still never really quiet clicks. It's as if it was trying too hard to become a trendsetter that it neglected to do anything other than find new and interesting ways of putting people in various stages of jeopardy. Danny Glover is absolutely wasted in a role that could probably have been cut from the film altogether and the conversations between our two men in peril (Elwes and Whannell) is too forced to be believed as banter between two strangers who must rely on each other to find a way out of their predicament.
I am not saying that Saw is a complete waste. Shot in only 18 days, the film does have a real independent feel to it and had the script been given the same 18 days as the shooting schedule, they may have really had something here. Instead they leave us with a movie that audiences will either love, or will trying sawing off their own arms so they can release the popcorn and make a run for it.
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