Saw

Year: 2004 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 3.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 3.0 / 10 5.0 / 10 5.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated R for strong grisly violence and language (it was edited for re-rating; originally NC-17). While it must be admitted that in this day and age the gore could have been much worse, the violence that is depicted in this film is disturbing and not worth its meager storyline/message.

Story

The story opens with two men finding themselves chained in a room with a body (apparently a suicide victim) in it. They don't know why they are there or how they got there. Clues left for them indicate that they are there as part of a sadistic life lesson concocted by the villain of the film referred to by police as "Jigsaw." Jigsaw's M.O. is that he tortures his victims through clever traps based on some character flaw that he thinks makes them not appreciate life enough. For example one guy had been faking an illness to collect insurance money, so because he was "burning people" he was in a trap that could set him on fire. Another was a drug addict, another an attempted suicide, etc. As it turns out the two in the room consist of a doctor who objectifies his patients and was apparently cheating on his wife. The other is a private investigator of sorts whose job it was to invade people's privacy. This trap concerns the fact that if the doctor does not kill the investigator his wife and daughter will be killed. Much of the movie is a series of flashbacks as each of the two men try to figure out how to get out of their trap without maiming or killing each other. Oh, and there's a cop who goes nuts trying to solve the case.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

By the end of the film we are led to believe that the killer is an orderly at the doctor's hospital. He is shown as a caring individual and so it seems clear that he's the bad guy. We even see him toying with the doctor's family as he holds them captive in their home waiting to see if the doctor will do as he is told. However, it turns out that the killer is the guy on the floor of the room that the two men are being held in! The orderly was actually in his own trap: he was poisoned and would not be given the antidote unless he killed the doctor's wife and daughter for the villain. In the end, the doctor, now in a crazed state of mind after hearing the "villain" fighting with his wife on a cell phone, saws off his foot in order to free himself from his chain, grabs the "suicide victim's" gun and shoots the investigator. The orderly rushes in and also gets killed blah blah blah and then the real villain stands up and leaves them there to die.

Suppositions

The film's worldview is just . . . well . . . weak. More will be said about this below but the basic problem is that the writer does a terrible job of evoking any real substance from this tale. Plot holes, one dimensional characters, and useless subplots abound. While the point of all these is to throw us off track for the big surprise finale, they only succeed in confusing the story and leeching the film of any real relevance. The end leaves one hanging and basically communicates nothing other than no matter what you do evil will always be one step ahead and is not even useful for teaching virtue. The only reason I did not rate this a lot lower is that the failure seems to be more from bad storytelling than an essentially bad worldview.

Significance

It seems that this film might have been trying to send a message ("we should all value life") with the same kind of over-the-top methods used in the brilliant movie Se7en, or maybe Phone Booth. That it fails to do so is a gross understatement. First, rather than choosing victims based on examples of objective and unusual evil, the villain chooses fairly regular people with minor character flaws. The elaborate traps he sets are simply not warranted for their sins. Now, obviously the villain himself is evil and (at least somewhat portrayed as being) insane, so we should not expect a humane response to these flaws. But any moral force the film might have had is lost in the vast discrepancy between what these people were guilty of and what they had to go through because of it (not that the killer in Se7en's methods were justified or were supposed to be, but they were more compelling). Second, and this is far worse, the villain was terribly inconsistent in his work. One of the victims, a drug addict, was forced to stab a man to death (while he watched) in order to escape her trap. Well what did that guy do to deserve his grizzly death? Nothing apparently. How does this trap promote the idea that life is to be valued? It doesn't. In fact, how would the murder of the doctor's family make life seem more valuable? This is not just a minor plot hole, it's just stupid. Third, even if the villain had good reasons for his traps (which he does not) and even if he were consistent in his methods (which he isn't) that still would not explain . . .

[SPOILER WARNING!]

. . . the actions or choice of the orderly. Why would the villain choose the one person in the film that was actually portrayed as being somewhat kind to be the executioner of an innocent mother and daughter? How does that promote a valued life? And why would the orderly do it? Some have guessed that he was apparently weak and easily manipulated (thus his character flaw). But this will not do as an explanation. Being weak is not enough to explain someone's willingness to do something like that. Even being poisoned is not enough - why not simply call Poison Control moron! The orderly knew the killer was nowhere near him - he could have easily called the cops and saved everyone. Instead, he is portrayed as actually enjoying his task of frightening the family. What the heck??? OK, maybe that was his flaw but then how would being allowed to get away with it be a lesson? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

All that to say that even the positive (although anemic) message of the film is obliterated by a poorly told story that uses a severely lacking morality as nothing more than a springboard for creative violence and torture. This makes the film worthless to any but gore fans.