Nothing like its original

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2005)

Eight people, several rooms and again the incapable police. Jigsaw again came out with a plan and this time he decided to put eight people into a house with several doors (or so-to-say rooms). One of these strangers is to us well-known Amanda, who was the only one to survive Jigsaw's trap. Eventually they find out that they are all connected to each other somehow  they were all arrested by Det. Eric Matthews (played by Donnie Wahlberg), with the exception of Daniel who was his son.
On the other end we have E. Matthews and S.W.A.T. who broke into Jigsaw's place. Jigsaw, or as he introduced himself as John, wanted to talk to Matthews alone. On his opinion, he doesn't appreciate his son's life, so I guess that's the reason enough to threat Daniel's life. Anyways, John has changed so much since the last time we saw him in Saw, his face just wasn't the same, it was poor, it grew thin. Now I know that he has a cancer but I wouldn't say that they changed a person so much only because of that to shoot a movie. We can even see in flash-back, when he went to the doctor to find out that he was dying, he looked the same as in Saw II, not as in Saw. Now that's strange. And it just didn't seem believable that such an old man with a cancer, barely breathing, barely moving, would be able to come out with and "direct" such a brilliant game.
Well, back to those eight people who were reducing themselves one by one. The point of the game was as usual, to stay alive. Their task was to find an antidote (they were breathing in a deadly nerve agent) as soon as possible  they've gotten only 2 hours left.
In the mean time, Det. E. Matthews has almost beaten Jigsaw to death. Yes, good work, that's the way the police works. And again Jigsaw tricked them, again he was smarter than them  he won again. Matthews imposed upon the things that Jigsaw said, he was led into a wrong house by Jigsaw. He was looking for his son but has found himself in the wrong place. The whole time Daniel was there in the Jigsaw's place. This Jigsaw really likes to play games till the end  with cops too. And those tape-recordings that we see playing on computers in his room  they weren't even live. Kind of predictable, when he says to Det. Matthews not to worry about his son, that he's in a safe and secure state. John tricked the police again but this time he wasn't alone. He had a little helper, someone who was a former drug-addict. Oh, yes, his helper was Amanda herself. John has been her teacher and he's been giving her lessons of so-called life and appreciations of life. And since he's been dying, Amanda decided to carry on his work.
I must admit I knew about the ending all along because it was a rumor since the beginning. But even if I didn't know that, I wouldn't consider that being a twist. They so wanted to approach this movie to its original that they failed in inventing something new and so they've really moved from what Saw represented.
This movie lacks James Wan (the director of Saw) and of course Leigh Whannell as an actor (co-writer of screenplay). It basically lacks all the benefits that movie Saw had. I'd give a movie 7 stars because I can't just overlook Jigsaw's amazing and well-directed game.
7/10