Saw (2004)

Mark Burg

## Overview

Photographer Adam Stanheight awakens in a dilapidated bathtub, with his ankle chained to a pipe. Across the room is oncologist Dr. Lawrence Gordon with the corpse of an apparent suicide victim between them holding a revolver and a microcassette recorder. Both men find a tape in their pockets, and Adam retrieves the recorder. Adam's tape urges him to survive, while Gordon's tells him to kill Adam by six o'clock or his wife Alison and daughter Diana will be killed. Adam finds a bag containing two hacksaws inside the toilet which they try to use to cut through their chains, but Adam's saw breaks. Gordon realizes the saws are meant for their feet, and identifies their captor as the Jigsaw Killer—a serial killer testing his victims' will to survive through murderous contraptions referred to as "games", whom Gordon knows of because he was once a suspect.

Five months prior, Gordon, while discussing the terminal brain cancer of patient John Kramer, was interrogated by Detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who found his penlight at the scene of one of Jigsaw's games. Gordon's alibi cleared him, but he agreed to view the testimony of heroin addict Amanda Young, the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw's traps. After Gordon's release, Tapp and Sing found Jigsaw's warehouse using the videotape from Amanda's game. There, they apprehended Jigsaw and saved a man from a trap, but Jigsaw escaped after Sing triggered a shotgun trap in the hallway that killed him.

In the present, Alison and Diana are held captive at their apartment as their captor watches Adam and Dr. Gordon through a hidden camera. The house is simultaneously watched by Tapp, having been discharged from the police after Sing's death and becoming obsessed with the Jigsaw case, convinced that Gordon is the killer. Meanwhile, Gordon finds a box containing two cigarettes, a lighter, and a one-way cellphone; recounting his abduction in a parking garage by a pig-masked figure who also captured Adam as well after the latter recalls his own abduction when he found a puppet in his darkroom, where he stored his photos of Gordon.

Alison, held at gunpoint, calls her husband and warns him not to believe Adam's lies, who admits to Gordon that he was paid by Tapp to spy on him and reveals his knowledge of Gordon's affair with one of his medical students whom he had visited the night he was abducted as the reason he is being tested. Adam finds a photo of Alison and Diana's captor whom Gordon identifies as Zep Hindle, an orderly at his hospital, convincing the pair that he must be the Jigsaw Killer.

Once the clock strikes six, Zep, seeing that Gordon has still not managed to kill Adam, moves to murder Alison and Diana, but the former frees herself and fights him. The struggle attracts Tapp's attention, and he saves Alison and Diana before chasing Zep to the sewers, where he is shot in the chest after a brief fight. Gordon, only aware of the gunshots and screaming, is shocked and loses reach of the cellphone. In desperation, he saws off his foot and shoots Adam with the corpse's revolver. Zep enters the bathroom to kill Gordon but Adam, having survived the gunshot, bludgeons him to death with the toilet tank lid. Gordon crawls out of the bathroom to find help while Adam searches Zep's body for a key and finds another tape, revealing that Zep was just another victim of Jigsaw following rules to obtain an antidote for a slow-acting poison he was given.

As the tape ends, the corpse in the room rises and is revealed to be John Kramer, the real Jigsaw Killer, who reveals to Adam that the key to his ankle chain was in the bathtub which went down the drain when he had first awoken. Horrified, Adam attempts to shoot John with Zep's gun, but John electrically shocks him through his chain and exits the bathroom before sealing the door, leaving a screaming and helpless Adam to die.

## Cast

* Leigh Whannell as Adam Stanheight
* Cary Elwes as Dr. Lawrence Gordon
* Danny Glover as Detective David Tapp
* Ken Leung as Detective Steven Sing
* Dina Meyer as Detective Allison Kerry
* Mike Butters as Paul Leahy
* Paul Gutrecht as Mark Wilson
* Michael Emerson as Zep Hindle
* Benito Martinez as Brett
* Shawnee Smith as Amanda Young
* Makenzie Vega as Diana Gordon
* Monica Potter as Alison Gordon
* Ned Bellamy as Jeff Ridenhour
* Alexandra Chun as Carla Song
* Tobin Bell as John Kramer / Jigsaw

## Villains

* John Kramer
* Zep Hindle