Bloody good time!

Rating: 10/10 (10 April 2007)

The inevitable deadening effects of repetition are beginning to infect the "Saw" franchise, now having produced its third installment in as many years.
While "Saw III" provides a decent number of new twists, psychological as well as torture-wise, it necessarily lacks the originality of its predecessors and -- if the blase response at an opening-day screening at New York's AMC Theatre on 42nd Street is any indication -- audiences may be beginning to develop a "been there, done that" attitude. The film opened Friday and, unlike the prior editions, was not screened in advance for press.
Seamlessly similar in style to the earlier films, this sequel finds its archvillain Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, again delivering a quietly intense and scary performance) not doing so well. Desperately ill, he and his loyal follower, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), have enlisted -- well, forced -- the help of a female doctor (Bahar Soomekh) to perform some emergency surgery. Helping to motivate her is the fact that she's been outfitted with an explosive collar tied into Jigsaw's heart monitor, so if he dies, she dies with him