Saw 2
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure there's a thread about the film somewhere, although a search didn't produce any real solid results, talking about the movie itself. C'mon, it's me, C-Dic. I can get away with this, right? 👆 Anywho, my Hollywood Video got next week's releases in, and tired as I may have been after work, I popped in "Saw 2" at 1:00 A.M, sacrificing sleep, and surrendering to the posibility I may get a visit from the Nightmare Fairy.
I'll just come right out and say it, man. I thought it was a great, great ****ing movie. In a nutshell, I appreciated the new mature direction, presentation, and tone. Also, I thought the decisive situations in which the "victims" were placed in were more intense and clever. Casting, too, was a total 180 from the original. No annoying, whiny Ken dolls in the lead role; instead a very convincing (and surprisingly effective) Donnie Wahlberg at the helm, and a solid supporting cast. Especially Tobin Bell, and his twisted sense of "humanity", which he displayed flawlessly. I really liked, and appreciated, how they opened Jigsaw up..figuratively, of course.
My only gripe about the movie is that I felt they made Jigsaw/John's scheme a little more complex than necessary. I'll spoiler tag some of it for those who haven't seen it.
Spoiler:Just a little bump in the road that could more or less be chalked up to "what if's" or just simply drawing your own conclusion.
We learn in the end that John had taken Amanda under his wing, after she survived and was "reborn". Now, John more or less tutored Amanda, who wanted to teach Detective Matthews a lesson. She took his son, and 7 other people who had been framed/wrongfully accused by Matthews. What was the point? They were victimized to begin with, so why the double dose? Sure they were all jailbirds at some point, but chosing them in particular made little sense to me. Perhaps, had they learned that Daniel was the detective's son, the game would have been over sooner? Maybe, had Amanda not survived, someone would have figured out the connection and used the rest of the game as their own revenge? Who's to say, the plot was just a little shaky, especially when Jigsaw was relegated to the background...which indeed made me wonder who's game it was afterall.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with this one. So much so, I'll probably end up owning it. It's really nice to see Lions Gate correct their past mistakes, be able to work with a moderate budget, and actually turn out what I consider to be, a very solid, respectible thriller that outdoes it's predecessor tenfold.
Kudos, LGF.