Okay for the gore, a letdown otherwise

Rating: 5/10 (10 December 2016)

SAW III begins in a super-grisly fashion that sets the path for extreme gore, with a trio of extraordinarily unpleasant incidents. The first sees a virtual reprise of the gag from the original SAW flick – a guy wakes up with his leg chained to a post, and there's a hacksaw to hand. However, in a novel twist, this guy sees fit to get a porcelain slab and proceed to SMASH his foot out of shape until he can twist it through the manacle. Soon after, there's a Native American guy who has to pull a series of hooks out of his flesh before a bomb goes off, and this is indeed the most sadistic, unrepentantly grisly moment in the entire movie – anybody who watches without flinching must be emotionally dead. The final incident sees a woman having to put her hand inside a jar of acid to get a key to unlock the bomb that's wired to her rib cage. It all goes wrong, and her chest is gruesomely torn off. Had enough yet?
After this barnstorming opening, things slacken off for a derivative storyline about a sick killer and the doctor who's got to keep him alive – or she dies. There's none of the gore that we saw in the first ten minutes, instead the film becomes largely uninteresting, let down by too many scenes of cod psychology and lots of flashbacks to events in the previous films that don't serve to go anywhere – incidents in the previous movies didn't really need to be fleshed out because they were self explanatory. The film also reveals why Shawnee Smith never really became a star after appearing in 1988's THE BLOB – it's because she's not a very good actress, and her wide-eyed expressions of shock and her mumbling do not amount to convincing acting.
On the other hand, Tobin Bell is self-assured and gives an entertaining performance as the fiendish killer, and Iranian newcomer Bahar Soomekh is great as a leading victim. But Angus Macfadyen's world-weary cop is boring, his grief unbelievable, and there's not a shred of sympathy for him as the story unfolds. Of course, there's a series of weird deaths, this time including a gratuitous naked girl – you won't believe how many shots we get of her naked body – and a bout of unpleasantness involving some rotted pig carcasses which tries to get the viewer spewing. The "rack" is probably the second worst torture in the film – a black guy has his arms, legs, and finally head twisted out of their sockets – but by this time the viewer has become jaded to the bloodshed – it's not as effective as in the film HOSTEL, in which the brief glimpses of torture made them all the more disturbing. Things culminate with some brain surgery (you'll see worse in CASUALTY) and some yawn-inducing "twists" which pave the way for yet another sequel. So SAW III is okay if you're looking for gore, but offers little else to entertain.