Saw Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)November 22nd, 2004
SAW
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
The concept's an intriguing one. A man awakens submerged in a bathtub in an abandoned restroom. It's pitch black. He's wet, frightened. He doesn't know how he got there or what he's doing there. What he does know is that he's manacled to the plumbing and he's not alone. Another man shares the same disturbing fate, a doctor no less, similarly shackled.
What becomes clear to these two men over time is that the doctor has orders to kill his companion if he wants to see his wife and daughter alive again.
Throughout their ordeal the men's unseen captor offers them clues, tools to assist them that include a key (but not to their leg irons), a cell phone (with no outbound service), a compromising wallet-sized photograph, a couple of cigarettes, and a hacksaw too dull for metal but sharp enough for flesh and bone. If the men are to escape their underground prison before the poison in their blood reaches its fatal potency each has a diabolical decision to make.
Owing more to "The Silence of the Lambs" than "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
(from which it derives its abbreviated name I guess), James Wan's "Saw" is a gut-wrenching shocker that blows its creative set-up by relying too heavily on coincidence, illogic, and the acting abilities of its two leads. Dr. Lawrence Gordon is played by Cary Elwes (perhaps still best known as Westley from "The Princess Bride"), a lightweight actor at the best of times and not one to carry a film that requires reacting to the physical and emotional abuse subjected upon his character. He cries, he whimpers, he screams in pain and fear for his life yet none of it rings true for a nanosecond. But he's Brando-esque compared to his co-star Leigh Whannell, a relatively inexperienced actor who could only have secured this part by sleeping with the screenwriter.
Wait a second. He *is* the screenwriter! Now that would explain it.
So we have two featherweights in a dingy basement faced with the harrowing prospect of necessary self-mutilation and we, the audience, are expected to care and/or believe? It's a tall order.
The other aspects of the film, when we leave the confines of the filthy, neon-lit bathroom and enter the world of the madman behind all this, a serial killer known as Jigsaw by virtue of the fact that he sets elaborate puzzles, homicidal traps in which his victims risk death in order to save themselves, are way more interesting. There are ghoulish set pieces and creepy scenarios featuring a cloaked figure in a harlequin mask and flashbacks featuring the killer's raison d'être, pursued by a troubled cop (played by a tired-looking Danny Glover). These scenes are genuinely gruesome for the most part and get deep under your skin. But when we cut back to the hysterical Elwes and the unimpressive Whannell any attempts at genuine horror are sent packing.
Director Wan doesn't seem to realize the limitations of his script or his performers. "Saw" should have been a lot sharper. Instead, it would appear to have been made by a hack.
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David N. Butterworth
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