Theatrical Review of Saw V

"

Theatrical review

By Jason P. Vargo
First published Oct 26, 2008

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

I´m as big a fan of the first and second "Saw" flicks as anyone out there. The third even had its charms. But that is where it should have stopped, to be completely honest. I praised last year´s fourth entry for mixing up the formula and trying something different. (Remember, that´s the one where we found out why John "Jigsaw" Kramer (Tobin Bell) was a "bad" guy.) But this fifth installment? Please believe there´s no pun intended when I saw it´s missing a heart.

A plot synopsis is useless, since we´d need to talk about a whole backstory involving the main characters from "Saw IV." So let´s just say there´s blood, there are games and there are morals. The main question, however, is why does this film so spectacularly fail to meet any of our expectations. Are they entirely too high? Is there an endgame in "Saw VI" we don´t know about which will make this movie all the more relevant? Or is it simply a franchise that has run out of gas for the time being?

It´s a bit of all of them, to be honest. There has been a "Saw" flick on the screen every year since 2004 constantly bobbing and weaving to spin more story out of something which should have been a one-off production. The series has gotten to a point where the events are so outlandish, contrived and hopelessly absurd there´s not even a good time to be had by the audience. See, the problem is in how the previous acts are structured. Kill off your main antagonists (Jigsaw and Amanda, in this case) and you´re forced to create new adversaries to whom the audience has no connection. And that involves quickly scripting a backstory via flashbacks and coincidence to make the story seem plausible.

Maybe introducing brand new characters in every new installment wouldn´t be so bad if a brief recap of what happened before were included at the outset, especially when both male leads (Scott Patterson and Costas Mandylor) look alike. Remind us where the fourth picture ended. To be fair, writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan include a 30-second lead-in to finish the gun battle started at the end of "IV." I suppose they thought that was enough to prime the audience´s memory. Newsflash: it´s not.

The action crosscuts between three different stories: Special Agent Strahm (Patterson) tracking a new Jigsaw copycat killer; Agent Hoffman (Mandylor) falling in with Jigsaw while setting up a new game; and a new group of individuals thrown together to see who makes it out alive. All that in 88 minutes. To be blunt, it´s too much story for such a short time span. Add to that frequent-and frequently confusing-time jumps involving all the characters and "Saw V" becomes a convoluted mess. There´s no motivation for a majority of the people on screen; sure, most of them simply want to live, but is that even enough for the fans?

In a word, no. "Saw IV" experimented with the situation, creating something new out of it. It was darker than anything previously in both style and story, yet worked on nearly all its levels. Its no longer enough to show a police investigation or grizzly killings. The killings have to be without reason or merit, without genius or innovation. For an audience who pays attention, the group of five are the most bumbling of idiots. They fail to think their predicament through rationally, which is the point, of course. Their traps-and the way out-is painfully obvious from the get go. Yet they don´t get it. We do, naturally, making their story inherently dull.

Besides that, we don´t get to know them on any kind of level. At least in "Saw II," Amanda was thrown into the mix, as was the son of our hero, Eric Matthews. There was an added level of "umph," if you will. The five here? Meh personalities. Even the strongest of them, Carlo Rota´s Charles, is a pawn to move around the stage. And for what? A few cheap splatters we´ve seen before? (Yes, the final puzzle is a rip off of something we´ve seen before.) Come on, this franchise is better than that.

I won´t even delve into the specifics of the other storylines since they are wholly forgettable. More than anything, this edition feels obligatory, as if the production was given the green light and cast contracted before a script was put together. Maybe the grind of producing a film per year is too much and more time between them would allow more development for the script. I´ll only say this: everything on screen surrounding police work is botched to the Nth degree. We see the events play out halfway through the film in our mind and, wouldn´t you know it, Hoffman, Strahm and Agent Dan Erickson (Mark Rolston) follow their scripted destinies. There´s no independent thought, no continuity from one moment to the next. As an example, Erickson chides Strahm early on for rushing into Jigsaw´s hideout in the previous film without backup. Guess what Erickson does near the end of this film? Rushes into an abandoned building…without backup.

The first three pictures provided a trilogy, if you will, that brought the story to a natural conclusion. With a little bit of luck, 2009´s "Saw VI" will do the same. And then, let the franchise rest for five years. Recharge the batteries, create a fresh and dynamic way to bring Jigsaw back into pop culture. Leave all the current characters behind with their assorted stories and relationships. Maybe a remake of the original, taking it in a different direction at the end. Something. Anything. The "Saw" franchise is now running on fumes. This current installment gets rates a 4 out of 10 as a standalone production.

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.