So so

Rating: 6/10 (2 November 2006)

While I liked Saw I and haven't seen Saw II, Saw III is just so so. It has a new story but it also interweaves an explanation of what happens behind the scenes of Saw I. The good thing is that this movie is gory and has some full frontal nudity. The bad things is that there is no character to care or root for and that Dina Meyer, who is reunited with Costas Mandylor after their excellent but short-lived Secret Agent Man TV show, gets only a short tertiary role. The main problem with this movie is that the Jigsaw character is neither scary-the mask is stupid, nor likable in a twisted sort of way, in the way one would like Jason. In the first Saw his philosophizing about life and pain is quite interesting, here it's not. It's the same stuff: you don't appreciate such and such, pain this or that, it's your choice bla bla. He's supposed to be a new Pinhead but Pinhead's thoughts on pleasure and pain were actually memorable. In Saw III we find a guy trapped who we are told is suffering due to the accidental death of his son and now he is bitter and vengeful. His life is shown in photographic flahsbacks so we don't really care much about him. He's on some sort of scavenger hunt designed by Jigsaw that takes him to different people-in-a-trap scenes. The traps are somewhere interesting, but again, that story line is not really emphasized. The main story line is a dying John trying to get himself cured. This movie is awefully long. I could swear it was nearly 2 hours long. It's too loud as well, a means filmmakers use to keep you from falling asleep, every step someone takes sounds like the whole theater is going to come crashing down. As is typical for bad scriptwriting, the whole thing is supposed to unravel in the last five minutes, everything is explained- of sorts, not just what happens here but also what happened in Saw I. Frankly by then I just don't care. While the twist is alright, the story line of the trapped guy is not given enough character depth. Everything is just too convoluted and we are expected to believe that Jigsaw is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. For his plans to work out, and they always do, so many factors have to go his way, it's just absurd. And when you think it's over, guess what, he knew that, too and that was part of his plan. Personally I'm not a fan of Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith, the main actors here. They are good second-tier actors but they can't carry a movie. This series has potential but someone else needs to be Jigsaw and the stories need to be less convoluted.